LP360 in the Classroom
LP360 LiDAR & photogrammetry 3D point cloud software is a powerful tool used in many university geospatial science programs. LP360 offers a complete range of professional mapping software, training, and support to help academic programs get the most out of their geospatial data.
At Complutense University in Spain, Ignacio Zapico Alonso is an Assistant Professor of Geomorphology and Geomorphic Reclamation who uses LP360 software with master students and researchers of the Geology Faculty.
The geomorphic reclamation research group works on designing and monitoring rehabilitated mining areas. The program creates topographies with both laser scans or SfM methodology paired with drone images for many of their surveying projects. When a rehabilitated area experiences plant growth, researchers and students use LP360 to classify point clouds and extract the ground to study erosion and stability. Then, the processed point clouds are studied with multitemporal software packages to look for unstable areas, drills, or gullies, and calculate total sediment yields.
Ecological restorations based on geomorphic principles are proven to be stable and enable significant vegetation growth with a high ground cover. However, vegetation presence makes running topographic analysis difficult. LP360 software is used by the class to process their data and remove vegetation that ranges from a few millimeters to several dozens of centimeters.
The video below shows a geomorphic reclamation project for the re-establishment of landform stability at a watershed scale in mined sites at the Alto Tajo Natural Park, Spain.
You can learn more about this research project at the following link, provided by Complutense University: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925857417305943
Are you creating 3D point clouds in your academic geospatial curriculum? LP360 provides educational discounts for the processing software you need. We offer the LP360 lab pack and can provide workflow documents that can be useful to instructors building out coursework.