HIGH RESOLUTION AIRBORNE LASER SCANNING AND HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGING WITH A SMALL UAV PLATFORM

Cave ice formations can be considered an indicator of long-term changes in the landscape. Using terrestrial laser scanning we generated a time series database of a 3-D cave model. We present a novel approach toward registration of scan missions into a unified coordinate system and methodology for detection of cave floor ice changes. We demonstrate the results of the ice dynamics monitoring correlated with meteorological observations in the Silická ľadnica cave situated in the Slovak Karst.

This paper presents a novel approach that provides evidence of environmental conditions during the formation of a cave inferred from measuring the geometry of the cave surface. We focused on winding channels with associated cave landforms carved high up in the cave ceiling inaccessible to direct inspection by speleologists. This was possible by coupling 3-D laser scanning of the cave and analyzing the cave morphology by the tools used in 3-D computer graphics and digital terrain analysis.