Baseline Remote Sensing Survey of the Mayan Biosphere Reserve (MBR) in Petén Guatemala

Summary

The Fundación Patrimonio Cultural y Natural Maya (PACUNAM), a non-governmental-organization (NGO) from Guatemala, works for the promotion and preservation of cultural and natural patrimony contained within the Mayan Biosphere Reserve (MBR) in the department of Petén in Guatemala. To aid with their preservation and promotion goals, PACUNAM, has developed a plan to perform an airborne lidar and hyperspectral survey of nearly 14,000 km² of the MBR and neighboring regions over a three year period. PACUNAM has contracted the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping to perform the survey. NCALM started the first phase of the project in July of 2016 and within a period of three weeks mapped approximately 1,700 km² of the reserve with a multispectral lidar. This coverage is spread among eleven macro areas-of-interest which cover the archaeological sites of Tikal, Holmul, Naachtun, La Corona, El Zotz, El Peru, Waka, Uaxactun, San Bartolo, Xultun, El Tintal, Achiotal, Witzna, and four other critical environmental study regions. This presentation will provide a rationale for this multiyear project as well as cover technical, logistical and scheduling details regarding the completed first phase and upcoming data collection and processing phases.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• LiDAR in the Maya Heartland: Results of the 2016 LiDAR survey in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17236