EXAMPLES

The following was the recovery of a Town Road that had never been formally abandoned. It was just forgotten about for well over a century. The traces of the cart tracks were visible on the ground and matched the layout from the 1700’s.

The road was found with data similar to the 2011 dataset available in RI. Since the new set is available, I was curious how it looked.

The old road is much more visible with the new dataset.

Here’s a state forest in Harwich, MA. The title taken by the state is questionable but several boundaries of the permiter match the deviations in the surface model.

Rivers, Paths, Creeks, Walls - Pick out some features.

Quick and dirty digitization… close enough to get one near the object to locate it with equipment.

Am I the only one doing this? No way.

NH Stone Wall Mapper - https://granit.unh.edu/pages/nh-stone-walls
The number of walls maps has varied - and you will see in the legend that these are all on a layer entitled, ‘Stone Wall, unverified’.

Archaeologists take all of our fun toys. Run a search for ‘Ancient Ruins LiDAR’ and there are dozens of news stories with great finds that have been obscured by vegetation.

My workflow is to quickly extract the deviations in the surface in an area. I export it to CAD and print it out to scale. I then compile deeds over this framework culling out the bad data and reinforcing the ridges, ditches, walls and other deviations that I want to investigate. The GPS in the woods gets us close enough to find the ancient monument and then we can locate those with the Total Station.

I was engaged by the Town to survey a parcel to be acquired. Seemed easy as there was a recently recorded plan prepared for the seller.

Then I had to go and look at the LiDAR Surface Model. There were a couple of obvious deviations in the model.

These deviations went through the subject property…

But those deviations matched the record title. The other surveyor was contacted and he admitted to simply following the Assessors’ Map. He performed no research.

And while grainy, the 1892 Rail Road Map depicts the owners and the boundary in a very similar location.

The ridge was recovered in the field. It was monumented and was used to establish the Southwesterly extent of the property.
The conversation with Town Counsel and Special Counsel regarding the plan started off a bit rocky. Then the construction of the boundaries was outlined and while disappointed to lose 40% of the area they expected to acquire, they were pleased to receive a plan that was based on more than a preponderance of evidence.