First airborne LiDAR over a Maya city (Caracol)
Primer LiDAR aéreo sobre una ciudad maya (Caracol)
- Date
- 2009-2011 · confidence high
- Place
- Caracol, Cayo, Belize
- Credited to
- Arlen and Diane Chase, with the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
In 2009 a LiDAR flight covered about 200 km² around Caracol and revealed, beneath the jungle, thousands of structures, agricultural terraces, causeways and reservoirs. It showed that this Maya city had a far larger population and extent than previously thought.
Results were published in 2010-2011 (Chase and colleagues). It is cited as the first large-scale use of airborne LiDAR in the Maya lowlands, although there were earlier small-scale trials.
What it led to
- an upward reassessment of the Classic Maya population
- adoption of LiDAR as a standard technique in Maya archaeology
- regional surveys such as Petén (2018)