Arrrghhh. Wrote a long and brilliant reply but had been logged off and <poof> it disappeared when I went through the Submit/Login process.... . I'll try again but it won't be as good (!).
@frozenintime Embarrassingly, I'm not sure how USGS makes topo maps today. In the olden days (up to the 70s) it was incredibly labor-intensive in that each contour line was hand-drawn from satellite imagery. In the 70's I ran into a cartographer in the Upper Kern on the JMT who was ground truthing a new Whitney Quad. Writing down assorted peaks, vegetation extent, trail location. What a great job! (though mine was pretty good, of course...).
I assume today it's mostly satellite imagery at various bands (the spectrums the satellite uses, e.g. IR and RGB etc). Lidar has to be specifically flown for an area. It's getting into wider use because the price is coming way down. All of Yosemite was flown last year and I think Sequoia Kings has been flown. Satellite imagery can give really good terrain and vegetation as
@dave54 points out above. So that's what being used now for USGS maps. You can also do smaller areas of lidar from handheld drones.
I didn't know you could get lake depths. That makes sense and is very cool. What sort of accuracy? There's also really good sea floor surface maps and I'm not sure how those are derived/mapped.
@dave54 or anyone else? Assume local areas have been done by surface ships but worldwide? Can satellite do that?
When we were looking for a missing skier a few years back I tried to find out if lidar or other imagery could show a person suspended in avalanche snow but no, alas. I wonder if bathymetry techniques are good enough to see an aircraft at the bottom of a body of water?
But, next, here's my latest effort just used yesterday in a fire effects class a friend is teaching. The idea is to show terrain and vegetation heights of a discrete area of terrain. So, bare earth, 1m, & 4m (ladder fuels); and > 4 meters (trees). This shows what's called the point cloud for the veg -- the actual pings sent down and reflected back to the aircraft so you can see the actual shape of the trees. I also derived buildings from the lidar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfQrZLwLmAM
Dweeby side note, I also tried other techniques showing veg height by creating various surface models (DSM's & DEM) which worked pretty well. If anyone's interested, I can give you the tech workflow. Also, if anyone has other ideas I'd love to hear them!
OK. More than anyone probably wants to know but looks pretty darned cool. I also just ordered 32GB of RAM. This stuff just sucks down processor power... . And, oh yeah, I'm retired so just tinkering with this rather than yelling at kids to stay off my lawn... .
George