Visualization as a Tool for Validation and Exploration

NEON's Airborne Observation Platform will provide LiDAR and hyperspectral imaging data that can be used to characterize environmental change over large study areas. While the quality of the instruments continues to increase, software tools for exploring, analyzing and visualizing LiDAR data are one area that lags behind. I will present a real time visualization technique that creates an easy-to-interpret non-photrealistic visualization of discrete NEON LiDAR data. This technique can be used to virtually explore the dataset at varying levels of detail and also for validating results of analyses such as tree segmentation, species identification, biomass estimation and unsupervised clustering, which could be used to guide fieldwork. The integration of visualization and analysis helps evaluate the performance of analysis software and leads an overall better understanding of the dataset.