Project Details
Projekt
Virtual Landscape and Multispectral Survey
Applicant
Matthias Lang, Ph.D.
Subject Area
Prehistory and World Archaeology
Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Geoinformatics, Cartography
Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Geoinformatics, Cartography
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 468897144
The project is a subproject of the proposed research group "Urban impacts on the Mongolian Plateau - Entanglements of Economy, City, and Environment". The project part presented here has the task to document the landscape to be investigated by the research group by means of a large-scale aerial survey with different sensors in order to create a highly accurate data basis for further investigations. The first goal of our project is the large-scale, high-resolution and high-precision documentation of the archaeological landscape in order to provide the participating archaeologists with 3D models, orthoimages and digital surface models. For this purpose, a so-called fixed-wing drone will be used, which, with its long range and flight duration, allows the recording of areas up to one square kilometer in size in a single mission. At the same time, the areas will be imaged with a multispectral camera, which covers the near-infrared range in addition to visible light. From the resulting images, vegetation indices can be calculated that clearly show the differences in the vitality of plants. In this way, it is possible to identify subterranean archaeological structures based on vegetation characteristics that would otherwise remain hidden to the human eye. Especially the open steppe landscape of Mongolia with its low and homogenous vegetation seems to be predestined for such an investigation. In a third step, the generated data will be compared with the results of the geophysical prospection to find out which features and structures can be best identified in which data sets and how they differ. For this purpose, an integrated GIS database system is implemented, which guarantees the integration of the data and the joint analysis. From this, a feature catalog will be developed that shows the specific archaeological structures appearing in the different datasets to serve as a basis for subsequent and comparable projects.
DFG Programme
Research Units
