A State of Art on Airborne Lidar Application in Hydrology and Oceanography: a Comprehensive Overview

Nowadays, lidar has been accepted as one of the important sensors providing accurate and dense 3D point cloud from earth surface terrain and water bathymetry. The basic idea of using lidar stems from the problem of measuring water depth without direct contacting with the water body or without any instrument mounted on the water surface in shallow regions. Bathymetric lidar that uses two different laser beam mounted on a flying aircraft above the water surface has proved to be a good solution. This ability resolves many of the industrial and military needs for accurate and precise geospatial information from water body in shallow area in a very rapid manner. This technology has been used in the cases which would be solved with serious difficulties using alternative solutions. In addition to hydrology and oceanography, there are other important application areas which mainly are urban mapping, forestry, and photogrammetry. In this study, a comprehensive overview to the use of lidar technology in the oceanography and hydrology is discussed. In ocean and hydrography, various subjects are tackled such as: dunes and tidal flats measurement, coastal change and erosion, flood mapping and prediction, snow and ice measurement, water bathymetry in depths up to 70 m. Airborne lidar systems are rapidly developing and expanding in new applications. Integration of lidar with imaging sensors, efficient using of waveform information and better processing algorithms would make a great development in obtaining more realistic and accurate 3D models of the geospatial objects. Maybe in future, more cost effective solutions would attract the users to suite from this technology.