Lake Tahoe Basin Lidar

Watershed Sciences, Inc. (WSI) collected Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) data of land surrounding Lake Tahoe from August 11th to August 24th, 2010. The requested area of interest (AOI), excluding the actual lake, was 232,536 acres of delivered lidar data. The lidar survey used two Leica ALS50 Phase II laser systems mounted in a Cessna Caravan 208B. The Leica systems were set to acquire ≥ 83,000 - 105,900 laser pulses per second (i.e., 83 - 105.9 kHz pulse rate) and flown at 900 - 1300 meters above ground level (AGL) depending on weather and terrain, capturing a scan angle of ±14° from nadir. These settings were developed to yield points with an average native pulse density of >8 pulses per square meter over terrestrial surfaces. The resulting average first-return density of delivered dataset is 11.82 points per square meter with an average ground point density of 2.26 points per square meter. The vertical accuracy was estimated at 3.5 cm RMSE. All TRPA lidar data is in the public domain.