LiDAR and the Santa Fe Trail

Pikes Peak Chapter of the Colorado Archaeological Society’s March event

LiDAR and the Santa Fe Trail: A Citizen’s Guide to Preliminary Archaeological Exploration Using LiDAR Data presentation with Benjamin A. Zandarski, II, Fort Carson Archaeologist

Our speaker will describe how Fort Carson used LiDAR data to identify the extent of the Santa Fe Trail outside of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) in response to a proposed cellular tower.

He will then demonstrate how anyone can conduct preliminary archaeological exploration using LiDAR data, thanks to freely available open-source software and public data from the USGS.

Armed with this knowledge, anyone can utilize historic records and public USGS data to identify historic or prehistoric features on the landscape.

For more than a decade, Benjamin A. Zandarski, II has worked on archaeological projects from survey to data recovery in multiple states, including Colorado, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from Kent State University with a major in Anthropology and a minor in Geography.

He earned a Graduate Certificate in Geospatial Programming and Web Map Development from Penn State University.

Zandarski is currently the Fort Carson Archaeologist.

He and two colleagues manage over 200,000 acres of land for Fort Carson and the PCMS.

This includes over 8,000 archaeological sites; 2,000 of these sites are eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.