Changed my mind about LIDAR after a flooded dig site in Florida

I used to think ground penetrating radar was the only way to go for subsurface surveys. Then last summer during a dig near Gainesville, we got hit with three days of heavy rain. The site was too waterlogged for GPR, but a colleague brought out a rental LIDAR unit and scanned the whole area in 4 hours. The data revealed a buried shell mound from the Timucua period that we had missed on foot surveys. Now I always budget for backup scanning methods on wet sites. Has anyone else had a tool fail at the wrong moment and a backup save the project?

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the_nathan10h ago

Started questioning my whole approach after a similar situation last year. Had a ground penetrating radar unit crap out on me halfway through a site survey in Georgia and we wasted almost two full days waiting for a replacement. Lucky for us, a buddy from the local university had just finished a LIDAR project nearby and offered to swing by. We got better data in three hours than we'd gotten in two weeks of careful walking and probing. Makes you wonder if we lean too hard on our favorite tools and miss what other methods can show us.