REVEALING HISTORICAL LANDSCAPES BY USING AIRBORNE LASER SCANNING

Laser Scanning has been tested to depict and assess fossilized ridge and furrow in woodlands near Rastatt in South West Germany. These corrugated fields, displaying altimetric differences between 30 and 80 cm, are the result of medieval cultivation practices but rare are nowadays those places in the landscape where these remnants still exist at a scale which truly allows us to appreciate how the medieval countryside worked. Near Rastatt, such a field system exceeding 500 ha in size on the Lower Rhine Terrace was converted from arable land to forest during the 18th century, with undulations created by these earthworks being still visible under the forest canopy. Complementing a preliminary terrestrial survey, a cooperation was initiated with the Landesvermessungsamt Baden Württemberg for obtaining more accurate spatial information by testing use of laser scanning, the technique applied by this agency for getting a more accurate DEM of the whole land. Topscan was the company committed with the flight campaigns and delivery of data sets. Filtering and processing of row data with subsequent use of GIS enabled to generate realistic 3D terrain models, a large scale visualization providing even a realistic view over this ancient landscape, despite forest canopy consisting of mixed stands. The resolution of this data and the relative ease of capture compares favourably with terrestrial mappings, allowing large areas o