humble3d Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 Archaeologists Will Use Drones to Search the Amazon EXETER, ENGLAND—An international project funded by the European Research Council will search the Amazon River Basin for clues to the forest’s inhabitants for the past 3,000 years. Jose Iriarte of the University of Exeter says that recent work has shown that the Amazon was populated with more complex societies than scientists had thought the forest could support. Dark earth, cultivated by humans to create raised agricultural fields, and geoglyphs made up of large ditches, can be spotted from the air by drones carrying Lidar technology, which uses lasers to map the topography of the ground. “We are hoping that with Lidar we are going to be able to discover all of these archaeological features like mounts, ditches, trail ways and so forth, so that when you put them together you can really have an idea of the regional archaeological landscape,” Iriarte told Deutsche Welle. The data will also help scientists see how humans have changed the forest. “This has implications for conservation because maybe the very biodiversity that we want to preserve today is not only the result of millions of years of natural processes, but also have a human footprint,” he said. To read more about the use of Lidar in New World archaeology, see "Lasers in the Jungle." http://www.archaeology.org/news/3030-150223-brazil-amazon-drones Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arachnoid Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 You would have thought Amazon would have backed this project being into drones and all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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