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National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping

Charting the Future.

Pioneering the use of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) — a surveying method which deploys thousands of laser pulses per second to produce richly detailed, three-dimensional topographical maps — researchers at NCALM have found a previously unknown ancient settlement in Central America, measured the impact of a warming climate in Antarctica and searched for crumbling levies, eroding coastal areas and other evidence of the environmental impacts of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Objectives

 

Provide research-quality airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) observations to the scientific community.

Advance the state of the art in airborne laser mapping.

Offer the only graduate program in the world for Geosensing Systems Engineering and Sciences (GSES) to give scientists LiDAR training to tackle industry challenges.

 

The Lost City of Ciudad Blanca

NCALM might be best known for its work in some of the most remote corners of the world. In Honduras, researchers used airbone LiDAR to map a remote region of the rainforest in 2012 and uncovered new evidence of a lost ancient civilization. Their findings were verified when NCALM researcher Juan Carlos Fernandez Diaz returned to the site on foot, accompanied by Honduran and American archeologists, a documentary film crew and a reporter from National Geographic.

Featured Stories

  • Andrea Albright

    Grad Student's Wave Research Earns AGU Award

    GSES graduate student Andrea Albright will be introducing a new application of LiDAR — the study of waves and coastal erosion — to an audience of hundreds of esteemed peers at the AGU conference, where her 3D research images will be making waves on NASA’s big screen.
  • Meysam Gharahcheshmeh

    LiDAR data for McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica

    OpenTopography has released lidar point cloud and DEM data covering over 2,700 km2 of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica. The data was collected by NCALM in 2014-2015 and includes Taylor, Wright, Pearse, Victoria, Mckelvey, Barwick, and Valham valleys.
  • New Zealand

    New NCALM Dataset from New Zealand now available

    OpenTopography has released a dataset from the South Island of New Zealand. The data are part of the Marlborough Fault System and were collected by NCALM in March, 2014.
  • Preston Hartzell

    Dr. Preston Hartzell joins NCALM and the GSES

    As Research Assistant Professor, Hartzell will be working closely with Dr. Craig Glennie and the USACE Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory on related work in instrument and data calibration and multi-instrument integration.