archaeological survey ever taken in the maya lowlands is the initiative of the foundation for mayan cultural heritagere. it has never been researched, and it is massive. this is one of the biggest temples in tikal. what is lidar, what makes it such an useful tool? it really strips off the forest canopy. there are billions of laser beams that map individually. each return every time they hit something in the surface. that will give tremendous use for understanding the forest and the biomass. you said billions of laser beams, how many billions of laser beams? our first dataset had 60 billion returns. that is an incredible amount of data. how long did it take to collect that? only a couple of weeks. it was something like eight flights. it is a 2100 square kilometres of area that was covered in that time. you obviously have a great appreciation for understanding how sophisticated the mayans where, but did the lidar increase that understanding more? yes. the lidar showed without any doubt that we totally underestimated their engineering capabilities, in terms of landscape modifications, to make the land m

beaming lasers from aircraft, the largest survey, is the initiative of the foundation for mayan cultural and natural heritagelassic structure. it's massive. this is one of the bigger temples of tikal. what is lidar, exactly? what makes it such a great tool? it really strips off the forest canopy with billions of laser beams that map individually, each return, every time they hit something on the surface. that will give tremendous use for the forests and the biomass. and you said billions of laser beams. how many billions of laser beams? i think our first data said 60 billion returns. so, that's an incredible amount of data. and how long did it take to collect that? really, only a couple of weeks. it was something like eight flights. 2,100ka of area is covered in that amount of time. you obviously have a great appreciation for an understanding of how sophisticated the mayans were. yes. but did the lidar increase that understanding even more? yes, the lidar showed without any doubt that we totally underestimated their engineering capabilities in terms of landscape modifications to make the land more sustainabl