Logistics

Course website and Moodle

The course material can be accessed on the Schedule web page.
Course Forum, assignment submissions, project material, and grades are handled in Moodle.

Lectures

• Focus of lectures is on principles, theory, concepts, methods and lectures are mostly software independent.
• Lecture slides and video are available at each topic’s web page - you can access them through Schedule or Moodle.
• Topics webpages also include links to addition reading and other resources.
• NCSU Panopto: Fall 2024 Letcure Recordings

Assignments

• Most topics include hands-on assignment - the links to assignments are provided at each topic’s web page - you can access them through the course schedule.
• Following the Schedule, you will submit a brief (2 pages minimum, including images and tables) paper for each topic with the following paragraphs:
  • Introduction: task, problem
  • Methods: general description of methods and concepts
  • Results: present the results, including maps, graphs, tables with comments
  • Discussion: was there anything unexpected or problematic in the results? Were there any issues related to the methodology or software? Include suggestions for improvements here.
  • Conclusion: 1-2 sentences on what you have learned
• Submit your report through Moodle in pdf format, use naming convention LastnameFirstname_HW#.pdf.

Software

• GRASS GIS 8.4 (you can use these instructions to install it)
• Agisoft Metashape (provided at NCSU) - you can work on the demo version.
• OpenDroneMap

Other resources

• MicMac documentation can be found here, not used in this course.
• PDAL - Point Data Abstraction Library
• LibLAS and LAStools for managing the .las files in GRASS
• NCSU Virtual Computing Lab (VCL)

Data

General resources

• North Carolina dataset (formatted as GRASS location)

UAS data

Many of these links are currently broken and in the process of being migrated to a new hosting serivce.

• Boundaries of all COAs obtained by NGAT in North Carolina (google maps, shp)
• Study site (Lake Wheeler): COA boundaries (shp, kml), GCP coordinates (txt, kml), also included in the GRASS location (see processed data)
• Survey data: down-sampled pictures and log from the flight 06/20/2015, sample pictures and log from the flight 09/22/2016, all pictures and log (full flight) from the flight 09/22/2016
• Processed data:
  • Mid Pines dataset (formatted as GRASS location): LakeWheeler_NCspm with timeseries of DSMs from 2015 flights
  • Smaller sample point cloud: 2015_06_sample_points_NCsmp.las
  • Mid Pines point clouds (limited extent)
  • Optional (very large files: 1GB+)
    • Mid Pines point clouds from 2015 flights in las, obj and txt formats
    • Point clouds for the gully area at Midpines (high density, from 2015 flights)

Lidar data

• Classified lidar point cloud in LAS format for Mid_Pines
• Secref and Mid Pines interpolated DEM/DSM (use r.unpack)

Orthophotography

• Orthophotos as GRASS GIS packed rasters, use r.unpack from within the LakeWheeler_NCspm location to import them, run it with -o to override projection (it is just a different EPSG for HARN versus NAD83 datum, the difference is negligible)