Leica Geosystems airborne solutions featured in Hydro International

Two Leica Geosystems airborne solutions, the Chiroptera and the Hawkeye III, were featured in this month’s Hydro International.

Sharing the great stories of how our customers are using our solutions to improve their fields is always exciting. Around the globe, our customers are undertaking remarkable projects that are helping shape smart change for the future of their industries and our society. In this month’s Hydro International, two of our airborne solutions are featured.

The first is a user case study from Alaska, USA, using the Leica Chiroptera to better understand the effects of snow melt. The second story is about a demonstration in Japan of the Leica Hawkeye III and Chiroptera II surpassing expectations.

LiDAR Bathymetry on the Alaskan North Slope

In June 2014, the Bureau of Economic Geology, a research unit at the University of Texas at Austin, was contracted to conduct an airborne bathymetric LiDAR survey on the Alaskan North Slope. The purpose of the project was to further determine, understand, and map the local landscape and thaw-lake attributes of an area west of the Dalton Highway and Sagavanirktok (Sag) River, approximately 30km southwest of Deadhorse, Alaska. Researchers from the Bureau had visited the area in 2012 and found bathymetric Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to be an effective tool for measuring the area’s lakes. The group returned in July 2014 and conducted numerous flights using the Leica Chiroptera airborne LiDAR system. 

Surveying Japanese Inland and Coastal Waters

In March 2015, Leica GeoSystems conducted a series of demonstration surveys in Japan, which highlighted the capabilities of the HawkEye III Airborne Bathymetric LiDAR system. The system demonstrated its capability with full datasets in diverse environments and it also set new records for depth penetration for both the HawkEye III deepwater sensor, and the Chiroptera II shallow-water sensor. This demonstration was designed to prove the depth performance and general capabilities of the latest state of the art HawkEye III system in Japan and ambitiously targeted 13 geographically separate areas ranging from land locked rivers, coastal estuaries, and coastal strips, to offshore islands and coral reefs.

Both stories can be found by accessing the magazine here after a no-cost registration with Hydro International.