Originally published December 14 2005
Laser helps predict storm damage in Nova Scotia
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The high-tech laser can help predict which coastal areas of Nova Scotia are at high risk of flooding and eroding. The laser sends out a pulse 100,000 times per second and records it, resulting in a digital format of the ground surface.
Researchers are using a high-tech laser to help predict which coastal areas of Nova Scotia are in greatest danger of flooding and eroding.
Nova Scotia's coastline is shrinking because the sea level is rising, part of a process of thousands of years of geological change.
High above the Bay of Fundy, Laura Chasmer uses a lidar machine to scan the ground below.
"It's sending out a pulse at 100,000 times per second and it's recording this pulse so we can get a digital format of the ground surface," said Chasmer, a geoscience student at the Nova Scotia Community College in Middleton.
Back at the college, computers take the lidar readings to create highly detailed topographical maps.
"It's the precision of the lidar that is on the order of 15 to 30 centimetres on the vertical that allows us to be able to make these flood risk prediction maps with much more accuracy than we've had with existing topographic data, especially in rural areas," said Timothy Webster, an instructor and research scientist at the college.
In 1869, a storm known as the Saxby Gale devastated the Bay of Fundy, breaching the dykes and caused flooding far inland.
Webster uses lidar animations to predict what would happen to the town of Truro if a storm as big as the Saxby Gale ever hit again.
"The beauty of having it in the computer and with such precision, we can simulate any water level, either past events or predictions into the future," he said.
The college is gradually collecting more information about the province.
It's also training people from Sri Lanka to use lidar to determine where the safe high areas are for them to build, after the tsunami in December 2004 destroyed much of their coastline.
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