Lost Mayan City Discovered in Mexican Forest

The discovery of a lost Mayan city in the Mexican forest was declared by scientists. The use of LiDAR technology enabled this discovery. Ancient buildings underneath the thick foliage that usually hides archaeological sites were exposed.

LiDAR: Light Detection and Ranges, also known as LIDAR Overview

• LiDAR is defined as a method of distance measurement for objects by illuminating the target with laser light.
• It can produce accurate 3-D images of the earth's surface with up to 10 cm in terms of vertical dimension.
• LiDAR systems include a laser, a scanner, and a GPS receiver.
• When triggered, the laser scans the ground and sends energy pulses back to the sensor in the form of reflected lights.
• The scanner gathers this reflected light and the amount of time taken to receive the light, then determines the distance to the object.
• The GPS receiver puts coordinate information to the measurements.
• Hence, their applications include forestry, urban planning, archaeology, flood modeling, and landscape alteration. Some of the advantages are quick coverage, there is no interference of having access to the physical ground, and it provides accurate data.
• Some of the drawbacks are high costs to deploy them, particularly the prices of the required components, skilled personnel required to operate the drones, and, worst of all, unfavourable weather conditions.
• The use of LiDAR technology in the future is promising; innovations have been made making the technology cheaper to use.