• About the Center
• PI Guidelines
• People
  • Faculty
  • Staff
  • Steering Committee
• Instrumentation
  • NCALM
  • UH Geosensing
• Brochure

The mission of the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) is to:

• Provide research quality airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) observations to the scientific community.
• Advance the state of the art in airborne laser mapping.
• Train and educate graduate students with knowledge of airborne mapping to meet the needs of private industry, government agencies and academic institutions.

The Center is based at the University of Houston and is operated in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley. NCALM is supported by the National Science Foundation and is associated with the multi-disciplinary Geosensing Systems Engineering and Science graduate program at the University of Houston.

NCALM LiDAR Data Included in a PBS NewsHour Science Clip

PBS NewsHour reviewed current research into the effects of dam removal on New Hampshire's Ashuelot River. Data collected by NCALM plays an integral role. Click here to watch the video clip.

NCALM Featured in US News & World Report Science

US News & World Report Science is featuring an online article with Dr. William Carter about NCALM and the current and future impacts of LiDAR technology. Download a PDF of the article here.

UH NCALM/Geosensing Systems Engineering Hires a New Professor

Dr. Saurabh Prasad joins the NCALM center and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department as an assistant professor. Dr. Prasad earned his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering at Mississippi State University in 2008. He was an assistant research professor at the Geosystems Research Institute (GRI) and an adjunct assistant professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Mississippi State University from January 2009 through December 2011. At Mississippi State University, Dr. Prasad was the technical lead on several projects funded by NASA, NGA and DHS as a PI/Co-PI.

Dr. Prasad's research interests include statistical pattern recognition and adaptive signal processing with applications to automatic target recognition and land cover classification for hyperspectral remote sensing. In particular, his current research entails the use of information fusion techniques for designing robust statistical pattern classification algorithms for hyperspectral remote sensing.

NCALM Shallow Water Bathymetry System - Now Available

The National Science Foundation supported National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) contracted with Optech Inc, to develop a first generation high pulse rate green (532 nm) wavelength LiDAR sensor. The new green sensor, designed to operate with the electronics rack from the nearIR Gemini system currently used by NCALM, is capable of acquiring bathymetric data at pulse rates up to 70 kHz, with full return waveform digitization, in water depths up to 10 meters (assuming the diffuse attenuation coefficient of the water is less than 0.1/m, and the bottom reflectivity is >10%). At a flying height of 300 meters, the nominal outgoing pulse density is 10 points per square meter, with a 30 centimeter spot diameter on the water surface. This represents a significant improvement in horizontal spatial resolution over existing off-the-shelf commercial LiDAR bathymetry systems. Assembly of the new sensor was completed in June 2011, and factory performance and system shake-down flight testing are currently underway. NCALM is interested in collaborating with the scientific community in research applications that would benefit from high density and accuracy shallow water bathymetry.

Optech Aquarius Pulse Rate: 70 kHz Scan Frequency: 0 - 70 Hz Wavelength: 532 nm Beam Divergence: 1 mrad Field of View: 0 - 50° Flight Altitude: 300 - 500 m

NCALM

CONTACT US

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT