GS Student Presents Research

On Friday, April 16, Robert 'Quest' Brannock presented a poster entitled 'Extracting a Digital Terrain Model from a Forested Site using LiDAR Data' at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The poster described research he performed for his senior project under the supervision of Dr. Zachary Bortolot, Assistant Professor of Integrated Science and Technology at JMU.

For his research, Quest wrote a computer program for processing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data collected over Purcell Park in Harrisonburg, VA. LiDAR data uses pulses of laser light emitted from an aircraft mounted sensor to obtain elevation and height information about the earth’s surface. The program identified laser pulses that did not strike the ground (for example, they struck a tree or a building) so that they could be removed. He ran the program using a range of program parameters which enabled him to produce ground elevation maps which he accuracy assessed using a survey grade GPS unit. He was also able to make recommendations on choosing an optimal program parameter set for different conditions (non-forested, lightly forested, heavily forested) for people planning to use the same approach he used to process new datasets.

Approximately 40 people viewed the poster and he received many questions.