Comparing plane-based and drone-based LiDAR to pedestrian surveys in the American Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

LiDAR surveys have revealed vast areas of ancient human settlement in parts of the world that are poorly known due to dense vegetative cover, but the use of LiDAR as a survey tool has not been fully explored in regions like the American Southwest that feature minimal vegetation and generally good surface visibility. Our research program in the Lion Mountain area of west-central New Mexico seeks, in part, to understand Pueblo period settlement over vast areas in the Gallinas Mountains, but pedestrian survey is slow and labor-intensive. UAV-based LiDAR shows great promise in both revealing previously unknown sites and illuminating details on known sites. We have implemented UAV-based LiDAR with large spatial coverage, and direct comparisons are now possible between full-coverage pedestrian survey, lower resolution plane-based LiDAR, and higher resolution UAV LiDAR. Direct comparison is also made between visual data inspection and trained deep learning models for site detection. While UAV-based LiDAR cannot fully replace pedestrian survey for compliance purposes, it can greatly enhance the identification of surface features and regional settlement patterns.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38145.0