LANDSCAPE-BASED LIDAR DATA REDUCTION

LiDAR is an exciting new technology that allows objects on earth’s surface to be very accurately mapped remotely. One of the major limitations of this technology is that it produces an extreme amount of data. This leads to issues in not only storing data, but also in the amount of time that it takes to process the data. Many studies have been done on methods to reduce this LiDAR data by applying one level of reduction across an entire LiDAR scene. Other researchers have concluded that different levels of terrain can take on different levels of data reduction while still retaining enough accuracy to provide usable results. This project produced a user interface that allows a user to specify varying levels of data reduction across the same scene of LiDAR data based off land cover classifications obtained from using hyperspectral imagery and a slope map. Results from these reductions showed promising results.