New technology may speed up, build awareness of landslide risks

A press release from Oregon State University: Engineers have created a new way to use lidar technology to identify and classify landslides on a landscape scale, which may revolutionize the understanding of landslides in the U.S. and reveal them to be far more common and hazardous than often understood.

The new, non-subjective technology, created by researchers at Oregon State University and George Mason University, can analyze and classify the landslide risk in an area of 50 or more square miles in about 30 minutes - a task that previously might have taken an expert several weeks to months. It can also identify risks common to a broad area rather than just an individual site.

And with such speed and precision, it reveals that some landslide-prone areas of the Pacific Northwest are literally covered by landslides from one time or another in history. The system is based on new ways to use light detecting and ranging, or lidar technology, that can seemingly strip away vegetation and other obstructions to show land features in their bare form.

“With lidar we can see areas that are 50-80 percent covered by landslide deposits,” said Michael Olsen, an expert in geomatics and the Eric HI and Janice Hoffman Faculty Scholar in the OSU College of Engineering. “It may turn
out that there are 10-100 times more landslides in some places than we knew of before.

“We’ve always known landslides were a problem in the Pacific Northwest,” Olsen said. “Many people are just now beginning to realize how big the problem is.”…

This massive landslide near Oso, Washington, in March, 2014, killed 43 people and was one of the most deadly in U.S. history. (Photo by Jonathan Godt, courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey)

New NASA laser technology reveals how ice measures up

Science Daily: New results from NASA's MABEL campaign demonstrated that a photon-counting technique will allow researchers to track the melt or growth of Earth's frozen regions. When a high-altitude aircraft flew over the icy Arctic Ocean and the snow-covered terrain of Greenland in April 2012, it was the first polar test of a new laser-based technology to measure the height of Earth from space.

NASA's Multiple Altimeter Beam Experimental Lidar flew over Southwest Greenland's glaciers and sea ice to test a new method of measuring the height of Earth from space.

Aboard that aircraft flew the Multiple Altimeter Beam Experimental Lidar, or MABEL, which is an airborne test bed instrument for NASA's ICESat-2 satellite mission slated to launch in 2017. Both MABEL and ICESat-2's ATLAS instrument are photon counters -- they send out pulses of green laser light and time how long it takes individual light photons to bounce off Earth's surface and return. That time, along with ATLAS' exact position from an onboard GPS, will be plugged into computer programs to tell researchers the elevation of Earth's surface -- measuring change to as little as the width of a pencil.

This kind of photon-counting technology is novel for satellites; from 2003 to 2009, ICESat-1's instrument looked at the intensity of a returned laser signal, which included many photons. So getting individual photon data from MABEL helps scientists prepare for the vast amounts of elevation data they'll get from ICESat-2.

"Using the individual photons to measure surface elevation is a really new thing," said Ron Kwok, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's never been done from orbiting satellites, and it hasn't really been done much with airborne instruments, either."...

I can see my house from here. Actually, it's an aerial shot of Greenland, shot by Túrelio, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Lidar confirms Sandy’s dramatic coastal change impacts and future coastal vulnerability

US Geological Survey: The extent of Hurricane Sandy's wrath -- and the future coastal vulnerability of the region -- is clear in a new U.S. Geological Survey analysis of recently collected lidar coastal data. The research documented particularly dramatic impacts within the Fire Island National Seashore on Long Island, NY.

Lidar, or light detection and ranging, uses lasers to measure elevations in a specific distance/area. Researchers used the lidar data, collected during an airborne survey, to construct a high-resolution three-dimensional map of before- and after-storm conditions.  This information can help scientists and decision-makers identify the areas along the shore that have been made more vulnerable to future coastal hazards in the storm’s wake.

"Coastal dunes are our last line of natural defense from the onslaught of storms and rising seas," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "They are dynamic features that retreat from the battering of major storms like Sandy and rebuild in the aftermath; their natural cycle is inconsistent with immobile development."

USGS research oceanographer Hilary Stockdon said that the lidar data show that at Ocean Beach, for example, storm surge and waves associated with Sandy demolished protective dunes – and the structures built on top of them. "In the pre-storm elevation image of Ocean Beach, you can see houses that are sitting right on the sand dune," Stockdon said. "But in the post-storm elevation image, the high dune elevation is gone. The dune and the houses on it were completely washed away."

The pre- and post-storm ground conditions at Fire Island were similarly dramatic, USGS coastal geologist Cheryl Hapke said, noting that the USGS worked closely with the National Park Service to gather field data on the island....

The beach at Saltaire on Fire Island, pre-Sandy, shot by Mrshllmx, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

New program to expand, enhance use of LIDAR sensing technology

Space Daily: Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a new system that will enable highway construction engineers in the field to immediately analyze soil movements caused by active landslides and erosion and use the powerful tool of LIDAR to better assess and deal with them. The advance, being outlined this week at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, is just one of the latest innovations with this laser technology, the use of which has mushroomed in recent years in the study of everything from earthquakes and tsunamis to beach erosion and road construction.

The new computer program announced by OSU engineers is already being used to study soil movements at several landslides or trouble spots on the Oregon coast, and has promise to improve the use of LIDAR in the field, quickly and efficiently, by trained engineers. The program was developed by Michael Olsen, a LIDAR expert and assistant professor of civil and construction engineering at OSU, and a team of several students including Shawn Butcher, Alfred Flammang, Rebecca Pankow, and Andrew Johnson.

..."When you're in the field dealing with a landslide or moving soils, it's costly and time-consuming to have to take data back to the office for analysis," Olsen said. "The technology we're developing should provide critical data to help solve problems right in the field, improve construction quality and efficiency, and ultimately reduce costs and improve safety."...

A diagram of LIDAR geometry by John E. Barnes, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license