Make your own LiDAR maps for Gold Prospecting, Treasure Hunting and More!!

what's up everybody Matt Hospital the prospecting geologist here and today we are going to go over how to make your own uh Maps using lidar and uh basically how to go into doing that with the various free GIS programs that are out there as well as all the free lidar Dem data that is out there and then you can make these maps for gold prospecting metal detecting historical stuff I mean there's there's so many US for uh the Dem maps that you can make using this um so today we are going to focus mainly on I just kind of picked the random gold belt in the US we're going to look at Coker Creek Tennessee um so obviously you're going to need Google worth Pro uh qgis and Saga GIS and I will provide links for all these in the description of the video below and then the best place to get this data is called the national map download if you just type that into Google it's the first thing that pops up right here tnm download V2 and we're going to click on that and this is what you will see be brought up um so first thing we're going to do is download the data for this area um so what we're going to do is over on the left here you'll see elevation products 3de you click that deselect everything that is in here that is already selected and then go to where it says one meter demm and select that and hit show this is the one meter vertical accuracy liar data that's already been converted to a digital elevation model Dem and that's the main that's the main information we're going to work with and this map of the US with all the shaded areas is everywhere that has one meter demm data available so for this we're going to zoom in on Coker Creek area in Tennessee um so we're right in here see Coker Creek haasi river hawasi I don't know how you say that but basically this is the area we want so that what we're going to do is we're going to come over here and hit search products and it's going to search for the demm data that's right in our screen here and then you'll see the various Footprints pop up or you'll see these and you want to find the correct footprint that covers our area which is going to be Coker Creek Valley through here um is covering the bottom part there going to take a little bit to find it it looks like for some reason it's not covering that area [Music] immediately mainly because I think we're on that we're on the split between North Carolina and uh Tennessee so that is why so we want that footprint maybe not actually [Music] interesting oh wait yeah we want that one not that one not that one so that looks like our main piece right there most the other stuff I don't know why and we probably want this one here so we'll download those two so you're going to download both of these download save as uh make a file just on your desktop or somewhere else wherever you want to save these as I just made one on the desktop called make your own light R Maps so we'll save that one there remove that footprint and then where's the other one and then download that TEF file and hit save as and save and then it sometimes will take a little bit because it's a lot of data we'll get those pulled over into our F folder first and then what we're going to do is we need to download the most recent or upto-date versions of both qgis and so and I'm going to update mine as well so we go through this same process basically together and have the same exact ones right now um so basically I will provide the link for qgis in the in the things below but even if you just type in qgis into Google this should be the main landing page and you're going to want to go to this download now and then you're going to want to look if you're and what you want is the most stable release so I wouldn't do the download 3.32 right now I would do the download 3.28 is that is the most stable version and then go open it's going to take a little bit so we will pause here well that download since it's saying it wants to take seven or eight minutes to download because it's also a very large program okay so now that we got qgis downloaded let's go over to Saga GIS here once again I'll put the links in the description below where you just Google Saga GIS and this should be the first one that comes up but we're going to we going to go over to downloads here and it looks like we are going to be doing Saga 9 download latest version Saga 9.2 um so we are going to download this one we'll see how long if it takes as long as uh is qgis we'll pause and come back to it uh but you'll want to open the file let me see here okay so Saga runs a little different you're G have to download the file um save it to a folder and then when you want to open it you come into the folder here and you go down to where it says Saga guy basically the application and when you double click on that that will open it um you can probably save it as a icon on your desktop as well but this is going to be Saga 9.2.0 um so now that we got both of those downloaded you should already have Google Earth Pro downloaded I'm not going to go over that pretty much everybody should have that um we already got the files downloaded here of the Coker Creek area these should once again be the at the bottom here you see download link TI that's what you should be downloading on these here um so now we'll start with with uh going through with Saga GIS to make the KML uh KML file which is basically the overlay for Google Earth which I find to be one of the best uses of saga so we have Saga GIS here already open this is once again 9.2 you're going to go over to file down to grid and load and you are going to want to open wherever you saved that file and I put it on the desktop here select both and open those are going to take a little bit there we go we're going to have this set up as manager over here with data so now we see both of these now usually the easiest thing to do from here is you want to merge these two tiles because right now they're two separate tiles so if you leave them as that you will have to alter each one individually whereas if we merge them then they become one and they're easier to work with in general so you're going to go to geoprocessing to grid down to grid system and then over to mosaicing which is basically taking like a mosaic tile and like turning it into one that's my idea of it um so then you're want to click on the grids where it says no objects currently click on the three dots on the far right here that will bring up the two that you have pull them both over hit okay everything else should be good in there so we're going to hit okay and that is now running the Mosaic and you see a green bar go across there and it shouldn't take too long there now we got our mosaic um so this is we got some missing data in there but we'll make it work for now uh there's just obviously there's another file within uh the national map download that would fill in this piece right there but we'll make it work with what we got for now for just the demonstration purposes so now this is just the base uh Dem I mean you technically I guess could use it but it's not it's it's not the most usable in this form what we want to do it's generally turn it into a hillshade uh Saga GIS does not call it that though so now what we're going to do is go down to Vis you're going to go to geoprocessing visualization over to grid and then down to what they call Terrain map view which is basically hillshade um then you want to go grid system over to the right here where there's a drop down menu you're going to want to click on the bottom one which should then when you go to demem and over and click the eror down you'll have Mosaic that so you click that um you can put Contours on this for whatever you want whether it be 10 5 10 F whatever whatever iteration of numbers you want for actual Contour levels or intervals um we're going to turn that off because that makes everything run a little slower so now that we got all that we are going to hit okay and now it's going to think a little bit thinking thinking thinking and there is our uh basically our shade our hillshade you can then zoom in on if you want to for here Zoom around and find some mining features they're on here somewhere there's definitely some there's definitely some mining features right in there going up some of these side streams oh yep there's some diggings into the hillsides this looks like all plaster workings plaster plaster plaster more plaster plaster and looking in the Hard Rock so I mean it's pretty useful with what you can see um now let's see if we can actually get this whole area put on to Google Earth it may be too large I'm not sure yet so go and select and now you see it is pulling it up and automatically loading it into the correct spot on Google Earth which is just I love that you don't have to go around and try and place it in the correct spot by matching terrain features and stuff that can get rather difficult um so the fact that it just automatically overlays it already GPS coordinate tab and everything from the lidar data is fantastic um she's definitely taking her good old time here though okay so we're going to have to go back to the table here because it is too large of an area and it is not loading so now what we're going to do instead of going where we're viewing the entire active layer we're going to view just like this upper northern part here um and get it centered up and then once again again cuz it's going to pull what's in the window within its working area basically um so then we're going to go to export map to Google Earth again and then we want to go cell size as one and hit okay again and hopefully it actually works this time this is this is a pretty large area to be pulling so that's part of the issue here okay so there we go it loaded up correctly into the area it's smaller but that's kind of what you have to do otherwise it won't load so now I mean the nice thing is with overlaying this on Google Earth is that you can zoom in and see all the roadways you can put in the old mines and all that so this this cluster of workings right here that we can see is the hauling head field plaster workings um but the interesting once again that what ligher always helps with is while it may show these like discrete mines this whole stretch of Coker Creek was mined so now was it part of that mine or this mine or was it just its own thing I don't know it's hard to say um that gets into more indepth details on like analyzing liar and stuff you can see there's this whole cluster of mine locations here UNAM shafts add itss and you can see them on the liar here and these locations are not 100% correct obviously the mrds system is good it gets you close but usually it is not 100% um liar will put you right on the dot pretty much um so that's basically how you then make a Google Earth overlay from Saga GIS um super useful tool uh I use it all the time and uh yeah it's definitely a very very useful tool um now there is another tool within Saga GIS here that we can kind of jump into real quick and it's called it's another one that I use commonly and then also do the same way to Overlay into Google Earth but it's under terrain analysis geoprocessing terrain analysis morphometry and down to terrain roughness index and then you're going to once again grid system over to the right down arrow um to this part here which should be the Mosaic and then once again you just want the you want to run this on the original Mosaic not the sh not the hillshade Mosaic click that then we got create should be good hit run take a little bit um now this the hillshade is one thing to figure out on what you're looking at the terrain roughness index is a little more difficult but it gives you more defined features in some ways um I use both depending on what I'm looking for and just to get different views of it almost so here's what the terrain roughness index looks like and basically what it is doing is saying red is steep blue is flat and as you zoom in though like it'll show you the small cuts and fills is red is steep blue is flat so it can where's some of our workings at I may turn this into another overlay again so we can take a look okay so here's some of our mind stuff so you can see blue is flat red is steep so that's a steeper Hillside there but then you see these workings these are old mine workings right here show up more prominently because they have steep walls steep walls along this trench and stuff so this is mine workings in here um it's a useful tool the terrain roughness index uh something to look at and figure out it's a little more difficult to figure out exactly what you're looking at sometimes um like there's some workings right there definitely but then you can do the same thing and you can go in and go export map to Google Earth I'm not going to go through it right now does the same thing still has the same limitations on if you try and do too large of a size either Saga GIS is going to crash or if it gets through Saga it won't open in Google Earth if it's too large um just one of the things this is part of the reason why I will use apps like caltopo which have decent lidar to scan huge areas at one time and then once I find things of interest I will generate my own more focused liar that has higher resolution and is better to then do a more indepth study of a particular area um so okay so that was basically how you do Saga GIS so now we are going to open up uh qgis uh so type in just bring up wherever you saved it we're looking for qgis desktop 3.28 so open that and get her loaded up this is the long-term release should be basically should say qgis 3.28 fire n Ze not sure what that means but they usually have interesting names in that part for some reason um so let it load yeah the names of the qjs so the fire no idea how to say that is most likely a city of of some sort most of them are named after historical cities in Europe and other places I think so whatever the name is that is kind of a city probably in Europe or somewhere else okay so here's your loading out page that will come up when you uh open it you can just kind of eggs out of all this stuff and get it out of the way you should have empty project so from here you generally want to go over to the left here you should see this tile piece that looks like a tile of tiles um it is add a raster layer and that's a your Dem files that you downloaded are raster so that's what we want to start with here let's go there you're going to want um wherever you saved your files at so this is make your own liar Maps we are just going to pull the northern one this time since there's really no reason to probably pull the southern One open and add you just see a gray block um sometimes it shows up differently with a graded color scale and stuff but sometimes it shows up like this um so now what you want to do is go to raster up here in the top analysis over to hillshade and open that up and the one that we need is already in there we need a vertical exaggeration uh this is something you'll have to play with to figure out what's also going to give you the best view but I generally find for East Coast stuff four or five is usually good um the steeper it is if it's like in a very mountainous area less vertical exaggeration if it's in a very flat area more vertical exaggeration um and then we need to go the altitude of the light we need to put to 90 and that is all you should change in here you can save it to a file if you wish we are going to run it and there is our hillshade from qgis um these ones so while it is different than Saga and looks different and gives you honestly to me better resolution to me qgis gives you the best images created out of the demem and stuff um of any of them I mean just look at that the details amazing here the thing is is I generally have a diff I'm not saying it's it's not impossible but it is generally difficult to get it into um Saga GIS these are all plaster workings but qgis has an added bonus of you can add your own uh almost like Google worth so you want to go to uh qsm it's called search qsm kind of here in the bar and you may have to search for it uh let if you just type in like Google roads and hit add it will add a Google roads layer to your map um and then let's zoom out a bit so now we can see the roads over Lane on this here um you can also do I mean there you can do topographic maps there's a lot of stuff you can do there's a lot of different features within um qgis with the qsm search and stuff so you can make your own quasi Google Earth thing here where it's giving you most of the same information so here I was able to Overlay a toppo map and you can just simply turn it on and off you can do the same thing in Google Earth too um once again Google Earth is going to be better particularly for aerial images though we do have a bing aial here we'll see sometimes these work sometimes they don't so let's see what that looks like okay so see you can add in aerial imagery right to this too and simply turn it on and turn it off over top of it which is a very powerful feature in qgis um so that is very useful but you you can't pull it into Google Earth it's I use both for various reasons and I still find both useful for their own various reasons um I still Google Earth to me is better for mapping out a whole bunch of stuff all over the place qgis is once again you're going to be kind of more focused and narrowed in on a certain area where you're making a map or something which qgis can make very nice maps for you to then print out which I think we should probably do in another video um about these programs and everything um but yeah I mean look at the you can just see plaster workings everywhere like this is all some sort of hydraulic workings right through in here right along Coker Creek here's this one this is what we just looked at also within the terrain roughness Index right here is mining this is mining all the way up there this whole just been dug up Hard Rock workings here probably these look like quasi uh potentially bench plaster deposits they're running into there and working out um just I I absolutely love looking at this stuff if you can't tell so um so that's the basics of how you pull this in now we should I guess I I will pull over the other file just so I can show you how to merge and work with two two or more files within qgis at once too so I'm going to delete this hillshade one for now um and then we are going to go over into this and we are going to pull in the other thing here so now we have once again two discrete files um and if if you you want to merge these because if you don't merge them you'd have to do a hillshade on the Northern one and then you have to go and do a hillshade on the southern one and when you're trying so this is just two tiles when you're trying to work with say like nine or 10 or more or something it gets very cumbersome so you want to merge merge the two raster so you're G to go up to raster here down to miscellaneous and you'll see merge same thing as mosaicing in in Saga GIS um so for input layers go over the three dots click that and you'll want to click the two USGS ones here and you'll merge those hit run takes it a little bit of [Music] time and there we go there they are now they are merged so now you have have these two files plus the merged one so we can click those ones off and now we have a merged merged file here and to do the the hill shade is once again go be the same way so raster uh analysis hillshade but for this now you will select the merged file name or whatever you decided to call it there Z your exact geration once again will go five altitude of light 90 asmith doesn't matter when your altitude is at 90 asouth is where it is on the compass altitude is where it is going across if your altitude's at 90 your asouth is doesn't matter and I always prefer the altitude of the light at 90 um if you want to try and highlight certain ridges and Mountain sides differently that's when you're going to leave like your altitude of the light at 45 and alter your asouth of the light but I don't use that so something you can play around with if you want to delve into some of this more I haven't found it to be incredibly useful but we'll run that and there we go now they are merged and I think this is the hawasi river or however you say it can always look for workings around it because that looks like some workings there's usually workings in places well outside of what may be the documented Minds it's hard to say sometimes some of this you would have to go ground truth to figure out what it is so you have to get out there and actually go look at it to figure out if it is Plaster some of these larger open areas here kind of look like plaster workings or it could also just be an artifact of the liar and how it was processed itself um difficult to say without doing some ground truthing um but that's how you merge two together within qgis and once again you can still use like Google roads and everything to then show you where everything goes and so you have an idea of what you're looking at as well as Aerials and stuff if you need to figure out like is oh is that a is that a mine pad or is that a house pad um and oh that's a house so that that type of stuff helps with that um I think on the next video since we're kind of running up on over 30 minutes here probably there's a number of other things I do want to discuss with qgis in particular um because there's some other issues and stuff you run into but also how to generate your own STL files for 3D printing if everybody's interested in that and then uh also sometimes what happens when you pull a couple of these tiles you'll end up with a mind sight or your point of Interest like right in between the two or four sometimes um so it's it's I'll have to delve into then you Mosaic them together but you don't want that large of an area because it tends to slow things down so then you Mosaic them together to then cut and extract a certain area out but I think that's going to be done for a later date here so that's going to wrap up kind of the basics of how you're just going to take the raw light or the the Dem data that you can get for a lot of areas within the Us and other countries and take it and put it into free GIS programs Saga GIS and qgis and turn them into a usable map that you can use on your computer um for the next video next week I think I'm going to delve into how to make a a proper map on qgis to then like put it into a PDF format and uh print out so you can then take that into the field with you easily and also go over how to uh create STL files from the lidar data that we're looking at here so then you could 3D print if you want um so that's going to wrap it up for this one uh if you like this type of content please like share and subscribe we are working on growing the channel and bringing you better and more in-depth content and Adventures uh so yeah please hit that subscribe button and hit that notification Bell and keep tuning in every week for our weekly uh YouTube video usually at Saturday at five o'clock and we are doing daily shorts at 6:00 p.m Eastern Standard Time every day so that's a wrap for us today we'll see you guys uh next Saturday

Channel: The Prospecting Geologist

Views: 5,347

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Id: dc9IwNRweDo

Length: 31min 39sec (1899 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2023