lidar_tools

Tools to process airborne and satellite LiDAR point clouds

Warning! This package is under active development!

Quickstart

We recommend using pixi to install a locked software environment for executing code in this repository. Once installed, you can run scripts from a terminal:

git clone https://github.com/uw-cryo/lidar_tools.git
cd lidar_tools
pixi shell
pdal_pipeline create-dsm --help

Usage: pdal_pipeline create-dsm [ARGS] [OPTIONS]

Create a Digital Surface Model (DSM) from a given extent and point cloud data. This function
divides a region of interest into tiles and generates a DSM geotiff from EPT point clouds
for each tile using PDAL

╭─ Parameters ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ *  EXTENT-GEOJSON --extent-geojson  Path to the GeoJSON file defining the processing     │
│                                     extent. [required]                                   │
│ *  TARGET-WKT --target-wkt          Path to the WKT file defining the target coordinate  │
│                                     reference system (CRS). [required]                   │
│ *  OUTPUT-PREFIX --output-prefix    prefix with directory name and filename prefix for   │
│                                     the project (e.g., CO_ALS_proc/CO_3DEP_ALS)          │
│                                     [required]                                           │
│    SOURCE-WKT --source-wkt          Path to the WKT file defining the source coordinate  │
│                                     reference system (CRS). If None, the CRS from the    │
│                                     point cloud file is used.                            │
│    MOSAIC --mosaic --no-mosaic      Mosaic the output tiles using a weighted average     │
│                                     algorithm [default: True]                            │
│    CLEANUP --cleanup --no-cleanup   If true, remove the intermediate tif files for the   │
│                                     output tiles [default: True]                         │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Development

Use a developement environment (including pytest)

pixi shell -e dev

Or run the test sweet

pixi run test
# Full dsm processing run (takes ~30min)
pixi run test-create-dsm

Additional dependencies

By default, pixi only manages dependencies required to run scripts in this respository, such as PDAL. However, you might also want to install optional libraries into the same environment such as GDAL command line tools:

pixi add gdal

Or Ames Stereo pipeline:

pixi project channel add nasa-ames-stereo-pipeline
pixi project channel add usgs-astrogeology
pixi add stereo-pipeline

Using pip

If you already have an environment you can install just the code in this library with pip:

pip install git+https://github.com/uw-cryo/lidar_tools.git@main --no-deps