Lasers revealed 5 ancient civilizations that were hiding in plain sight

[CloudWatcher]

6. How are lasers penetrating dense vegetation?

The original article doesn't go into any details about just how the lasers are able to do this. Won't
normal LIDAR pulses just reflect off the canopy? Or are they using super-lasers that burn their
way through the vegetation? How does it work really?

The bottom line is that they send out billions of pulses, most of which do reflect off the canopy.
But a few million get through to the ground and are reflected. The computers process the results
and can tell the difference. Then they stitch it all together to make the jungle seem like it has vanished.

Seriously cool hack.

Here's a nice description of the process:

https://medium.com/supplyframe-hardware/lidar-looking-through-a-jungle-canopy-e19fc40e0f88