Lidar Mapping Has Also Yielded Other Earth Science Discoveries

The National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping is best-known for its headline-grabbing work in archeology – the 2016 discovery of previously unknown ruins of a complex Maya settlement in the Guatemalan jungles, undocumented settlements from an ancient civilization in Honduras uncovered in 2012, and detailed mapping of more than a dozen other settlements in Mexico and Central America.

UH Engineers Focus on Degradable Reconnaissance Vehicles and Evasive Drone Maneuvers

Ensuring military forces have up-to-date information about a potentially hostile region offers obvious advantages, but current methods for doing that – especially along shorelines, where underwater mines and other hazards can pose serious risks – all have drawbacks. It is especially difficult if keeping the technology out of enemy hands is a priority.

Archaeologists and adventure junkies are buzzing about the announcement of previously unknown ruins of a complex Maya settlement hidden for centuries amidst the jungles of Guatemala.

It’s a common human experience: Sitting on a beach, watching as the waves lap against the sand. You feel your worries start to melt away as your mind focuses on the breaking waves, one after another. You notice the differences between them – how some build up height as they near the shore until they curl forward into a dramatic pipeline that’s the stuff of surfers’ dreams.

Selected by NASA to help manage water for Indochina, Assistant Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Hyongki Lee is now teaching them how to do it without him.

If it has to do with water, you can bet Assistant Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Hyongki Lee has an appetite whet for it. Fresh off the success of helping Pakistani officials manage water resources, he’s at it again, now selected by NASA to manage water for Indochina.

For Lee, it’s an issue of fairness.

The National Public Radio’s Houston Matters recently interviewed the University of Houston’s Dr. Ramesh Shrestha, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the National Center for Airborne Mapping (NCALM). Michael Hagerty, host of Houston Matters, spoke with Shrestha about his involvement in the use of lasers to discover an ancient Honduran civilization.

After a powerful 7.8 earthquake shook the nation of Nepal last Saturday, many media outlets around the world are asking whether anything could have been done to save some of the nearly 4,000 lives who were lost because of the quake.

A scientist with the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) at the University of Houston was part of the first expedition to a remote area of the Honduran rain forest, returning with more supporting evidence of an ancient civilization that has yet to be named.