LiDAR, natural color and thermal infrared data collected by uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) for mapping topography and stream temperature along the Vermilion River, Montana, August and October 2023

The U.S. Geological Survey collected low-altitude airborne LiDAR, natural color and thermal infrared imagery via a multirotor, uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) along with Real Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS survey data along a section of the Vermilion River in Montana in August and October 2023. Natural color and thermal infrared imagery was collected in jpg and tiff format respectively and Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry techniques were applied (Over et al., 2021) using Agisoft Metashape Professional (v. 2.0.3 build 16960) to derive time-specific high-resolution 10 centimeter natural color and thermal orthomosaics of the study reach. Ground control points (2 feet x 2 feet ground targets) were also surveyed in the field using Trimble RTK GPS survey units and were used in georectification in the SfM process. The LiDAR point clouds were post-processed kinematic (PPK) corrected to a concurrently operating Trimble R12i GNSS base station and each point was assigned Red, Green, Blue (RGB) image values using the integrated camera module. LiDAR data was collected and processed using Yellowscan CloudStation software (v. 2403.0.0-662b8a2e5) to derive a 3D point cloud (LAS file format) and digital terrain model (DTM).