Business & Economy
Pulses of light probe under northern Michigan for ancient sites
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By NATASHA BLAKELY
Capital News Service
LANSING – Archaeologists in northern Michigan have used pulses of light shot from airplanes to double their discoveries. This remote sensing technology is called light detection and ranging, or lidar. Lidar sends out a pulse of light that returns a measure of distance from the object it strikes. It can improve the efficiency of archaeological searches, particularly when scanning vast areas for small details, according to a recent study published on plos.org. Lidar helped locate cache pits in the upper Great Lakes region.