Uses of LiDAR Derived Data Products
at WVDEP
West Virginia Association of Geospatial
Professionals Conference
May 9, 2012
Introduction

WVDEP’s TAGIS Unit established a rigorous in-house QC review and editing workflow and
successfully produced derived data products (“deliverables”), including:
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

Currently, there are deliverables still under construction, these are:
o
o
o

Intensity image
Breaklines
Digital elevation model (DEM)
ESRI elevation grid
Hillshade
100 foot contours
20 foot contours
Slope and aspect datasets
Contiguous, watershed-size 2 foot contour dataset
Vegetation canopy height dataset may yet be initiated
Building footprints dataset
The .LAS files covering the first deliverable area were provided to West Virginia View where
they were recently made available to any interested party for download.
2
Received Deliverables from NRAC
*
Three
deliverables so
far
 Deliverable are
watershed-based

3rd
2nd
1st
*Natural Resource Analysis Center
3
QC Checking
Status
1FEMA’s
QC Contractor Dewberry
1WVDEP
First
Second
1st
Deliverable
Passed
N/A
Completed
2nd
Deliverable
Failed2
In progress
Completed
3rd
Deliverable
4th
Deliverable
contracted Dewberry to look at only 5% of tiles for micro errors. TAGIS’
QC process looks at all tiles in NRAC’s deliverables.
1FEMA
An automatically but incorrect adjustment in elevation by NRAC’s production
software produced an error they discovered in tiles for McDowell County after
submittal of 2nd deliverable to Dewberry. Corrected dataset is expected for
delivery to WVDEP the week of May 6th, 2012.
2
4
Derived Data Products Production
Product
1st. Deliverable
Intensity Image
Completed
Breaklines
Completed
Digital Elevation Model
(DEM)
Completed
ESRI Elevation Grid
Completed
Hillshade
Completed
100’ Contours
Completed
20’ Contours
Completed
2’ Contours
Nearly Completed1
Slope
Completed
Aspect
Completed
Building footprints
Not Started
Vegetation canopy
Not Started
2nd. Deliverable
In production
Draft Completed
1Aggregates
(22 blocks created from 2144 tiles) were created but attempts at editing along edges
crashes ArcGIS. Planned May onsite collaboration with Virtual Geomatics technical staff to produce a
contiguous dataset.
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LiDAR Derived Hillshade

Results of completion of the project’s
first large, multi-county size hillshade
o
Expected uses  several now confirmed
•
•
•
•
o
Subsidence
Portals
Refuse piles
Slips
Unexpected uses  only one confirmed
but it’s a biggie!
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LiDAR Derived Hillshade  subsidence
1
Related
Sinks
2
1
Major opening
2
3
3
Meters
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Salt was King before Coal




Only 8 miles from WVDEP’s headquarters is
the town of Malden, WV.
In Colonial America, salt was rare and very
expensive.
From 1806 to 1808, in present day Malden,
David and Joseph Ruffner developed the
world's first deep well drilling process.
That area became known as the "Kanawha
Salines“, a very wealthy industrial region on
the frontier.
8
st
Salt Created the 1 Market for Coal


It was in connection with the salt industry that the coal
industry of the Great Kanawha Valley was started.
John P. Turner, a New Yorker, discovered coal there
and opened a mine in 1817 for the purpose of supplying
the Kanawha Salines’ furnaces  600,000 bushels of salt
were produced in 1814.

Professor William Barton Rogers, University of Virginia,
reported in 1840 ninety furnaces along the Kanawha
River
o
o
They made annually a million bushels of salt and …
consumed five million bushels or two hundred thousand tons of
coal.
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Coal and River Corridors


Coal fired keelboats distributed salt in the Ohio Valley,
the Mississippi Valley, and throughout President
Jefferson's new Louisiana Territory.
Salt was not the only commodity carried on our region's
rivers as markets for coal opening up elsewhere
resulted in its serious export too.
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LiDAR Derived Hillshade  portals

What started it all
… info about a nearby
pre-Civil War - 1910
mine never located in
the field
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Hillshade and Suspected Portals … on a Roll
Green vectors are West Virginia Geologic and
Economic Survey’s coal outcrop dataset
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Another Hillshade, Suspected Portals and Coal Outcrop Example
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Hillshade and Old Mine Map Alignment
Use of the LiDAR derived hillshade to adjust scale
and orientation of scanned mine maps was totally
unanticapted!
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Going a Little Off the Deep End Portal Wise …


Within an 8 mile
radius of DEP’s
Headquarters …
more than 800
suspected old
portals were
found in just a
few hours of
looking.
None are in the
AML Inventory.
15
Hillshade and Traces of the Past

Walnut Grove was a pre-civil war
plantation owned by the Summer
family.
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Hillshade, History and Archeology
Walnut Grove Area
The new
The
site of dataset
hillshade
log cabin.
also clearly
shows the old
trail system used
by settlers and
Native
Americans
sometimes
called the Mary
Ingles Trail.
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Other Discoveries Using Hillshade
Landslides
 Wildcat
mines
 Underground
mine fires

Logan Airport
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LiDAR Derived Hillshade difference grid

Wyoming County has two LiDAR datasets
Fills
2009
2003WVDEP
FEMA
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Public Access to LiDAR and Derived Datasets
.LAS files now downloadable by any
interested parties from West Virginia
View.
 April roll out of an aggregated
hillshade dataset from TAGIS’ Mining
Data Tools.

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Aggregated Hillshade and WVSAMB
WVSAMB photogrammetrically-based hillshade is above and left
of green lines. WVDEP’s LiDAR-based hillshade elsewhere
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