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EAARL: Experimental Advanced Airborne Research LiDAR

The EAARL (Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar) is an airborne lidar that provides unprecedented capabilities to survey coral reefs, nearshore benthic habitats, coastal vegetation, and sandy beaches. The EAARL sensor suite includes:
  • raster−scanning−water penetrating full−waveform adaptive lidar,
  • 20cm/pixel color Infrared down−looking color digital camera,
  • 80cm/pixel RGB digital camera, a hyperspectral scanner1,
  • array of precision kinematic GPS receivers which provide
    for sub−meter geo−referencing of each laser and multi−spectral
    sample.
  • precision Digital Miniature Attitude Reference System (DMARS)
    IMU for precision attitude determination.

EAARL has the unique real−time capability to detect, capture, and automatically adapt to each laser return backscatter over a large signal dynamic range and keyed to considerable variations in vertical complexity of the surface target. These features enable automatic adaptive acquisition of dramatically different surface types in a single EAARL overflight. This makes EAARL uniquely well suited for mapping applications such as coral reefs, bright sandy beaches, coastal vegetation, and trees where extreme variations in the laser backscatter complexity and signal strength are caused by different physical and optical characteristics.

The EAARL system also includes two digital cameras. One is a three band multispectral camera with green, red, and infrared bands. It provides approximately 1600x1200 20cm pixels. Each photo is taken exactly on the GPS second. The second camera is a lower resolution RGB camera also operating at 1-Hz. It provides roughly 70-90cm pixels.


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Announcements

EAARL LiDAR DEM images of New Orleans levees

 (11/22/2005 04:36 PM) 
New post-Katrina color coded elevation images of the New Orleans area have been added to our Google Earth dataset. The images each cover 2km by 2km. To load in Google Earth see:

the EAARL katrina link.

Hurricane Rita Photos

 (11/14/2005 12:53 PM) 
Photos taken during EAARL surveys in the Hurricane Rita impact area are now online in Google Earth format. The photos and flight tracks can be found at:

Hurricane Rita EAARL images

EAARL liDAR Bare Earth Katrina sample now online

 (11/12/2005 03:38 PM) 
EAARL Bare Earth LiDAR false color elevation has been added to our Google Earth dataset. Check out the LiDAR DEM images at: Katrina images
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Google Earth interface to Hurricane Katrina Photography

 (11/03/2005 03:58 PM) 
The NASA EAARL project captured roughly 250,000 digital photographs in five flights conducted a few days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast. Half of the photographs high resolution color infrared with 20cm pixels, and the other half are 80cm red/green/blue (RGB). All of the photos are now georeferenced and viewable online using Google Earth.

The following link will take you to the latest version of our Katrina photos/data:
Katrina EAARL data
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Author: SGT/Jeff Lee
NASA Official: 614/C. Wayne Wright
Last Updated: 05/13/2008
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