Exploitation of Countrywide Airborne Lidar Dataset for Documentation of Historical Human Activities in Countryside

Abstract

During three years (2010 – 12) The Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre in cooperation with The Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic and The Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic are providing mapping of the entire area of the Czech Republic by Airborne laser scanning (ALS) technology. The goal of this project is to derive a highly accurate Digital Terrain Model (DTM) for purposes of administration like detection of flooded areas, orthorectification of areal images etc. Such data set also seems to be an interesting da ta source for mapping of human activities in countryside. Human settlements, agriculture or mining activities left significant scars on natural landscape. These significant man-made structures are a part of so called cultural landscape. Man-made structures include ancient settlements, remains of medieval mining activities or remains of settlements abandoned during 20th century. This article generally presents how to derive information about the man-made structures from raw LiDAR. Examples of significant findings of man-made imprints in countryside are also presented. Goal of this article is not to describe a certain archeological site but to inform about strengths of ALS data to map human activities in countryside, mainly in forested areas.