Lidar

[66kbm]

Hi all.
Anyone know of any websites that provide this service, preferably free.
I cant find anything anywhere.
Kevin

[mcbishop]

Anyone know of any websites that provide this service, preferably free.
I cant find anything anywhere.

You'll be very lucky to find any for free these days (except in the US) as it's damned expensive to generate. The Environment Agency used to supply it within the UK (they have surveyed all coastal and floodplain areas) but now they have handed it over to their offshoot Geomatics who, in this wonderful world of ours, sell it. If you are associated with a university you may be able to get eyes on it for non-commercial purposes through one of the licensing agreements universities tend to have with data suppliers.

Mike Bishop

[66kbm]

Thank you Mike
Looks like i gotta work on that one then.
Maybee in a few years it will be free like Google Earth.
Kevin

[Flavivs Aetivs]

USGIS only covers the USA though, not Europe.

[Vindex]

Kevin

Most, if not all, archaeological companies offer LIDAR as a service but as Mike says it is not cheap.

You also need to bear in mind that LIDAR is only part of the tool set you need to interpret what the radar shows you and , if you go for an independent person, be aware that the quality of the report is directly proportional to the skill of the practitioner. It will not be the first time that a land drain is claimed to be a defensive ditch which a simple look at the land records would have shown you.

Contacting Exeter University may be a good start. I know their archaeology department is no more, but there is still a strong department whom I have always found to be very helpful with queries and generous with their time.

Failing that, the records office in Exeter (which used to be the first stop for any dig recce) hold tithe maps etc a lot of which show lines of disused Roman roads which were used as boundaries between land ownership. You would be amazed at what was still around relatively late into the 19th Century but sadly has not survived modern farming methods.

Good luck!

[mcbishop]

It's worth adding that all the previously unknown Roman roads I have found have appeared through aerial photography, geophysics, or even digging them up when there was no absolutely no sign above ground. Lidar is good for uncultivated (or lightly farmed, especially pasture) and can be brilliant in forested areas (whether wildwood or plantation), but there is nary an agger that shows up on lidar that can't actually be seen on the ground (especially following all the other clues Margary & co list), so fieldwalking a route is usually your best weapon, using Google Earth for the recce. As an example, English Heritage did a superb survey of Savernake Forest, showing all sorts of landscape features (including the Roman roads in there). Of course, you can find all of it by stumbling about in there (been there, done it, tick), but it is much easier to map from such an airborne survey, rather than planetabling your way through trees, and gets around problems of permissions and accessibility.

Mike Bishop

[66kbm]

Thank you all for the info on this topic. I shall take in all that i can and read everything again over and over, including my Margary book.
Kevin

[John1]

The Geomatics site isn't bad at all, non commercial use is ten quid per km square, and the previews are pretty good. I've found it good value, particularly for looking through tree canopies,

[Susan]

Geomatics is the surveying arm of the Environment Agency, providing customised geomatics services and integrated spatial data products. For the past 15 years we have been operating the National LIDAR data collection programme for flood and coastal risk monitoring. In this time we have gathered LIDAR data for over 70% of England & Wales, at a range of resolutions (2m to 25cm) and this is all now available on our archive free of charge for non-commercial purposes at https://www.geomatics-group.co.uk/GeoCMS/Order.aspx. Hope this helps. Feel free to contact us if you need anymore information.
Sue

[66kbm]

Sounds promising....I'll give it a go.
Not quiet "Google Lidar" i was looking for as my searches take me over several miles here in Southwest England. Time to persevere, and thanks to all who contributed.
Kevin