Identifying Caves in Southern Belize using Lidar Derived Terrain Models

Keywords: Caves, LiDAR, Maya, Belize, Archaeology, Paleoclimate
Session Type: Virtual Poster Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 40

Abstract

Caves are an integral part of Maya cosmology and for centuries have been used for ceremonies, rituals, and offerings. Likewise, cave speleothems and sediments have long been recognized as paleoenvironmental powerhouses, making caves an important resource for both archaeological and palaeoclimatological studies. Using two high-resolution (1 m) lidar-derived data from southern Belize – a 132 km2 dataset from the Rio Blanco Valley and a 10 km2 dataset from the Bladen River Valley – we assess the suitability of various topographic relief visualization models for the predicting the locations of previously identified cave sites. Southern Belize is diverse but vast karst landscape with thousands of caves that are also important archaeological sites. We assess caves in two distinct landscapes – interbedded sandstone and limestone uplands hills of the Rio Blanco valley and the karst mountains of the Bladen River valley. A combination of lidar-derived visualizations such as topographic position index, simple local relief model, and sky-view factor, along with multispectral imagery will be used to remotely identify potential caves. Using lidar for the remote identification of caves has the potential to reduce the time and cost for more effective and efficient ground truthing. Determining a suitable methodology for remotely identifying cave features in varied landscapes will provide a framework for identifying archaeological sites with robust paleoclimate records; these methods can be applied to landscapes around the world.