The Clayton Lake Dinosaur Tracks Project (CLDTP) project was a one week collaboration between Central New Mexico Community College (CNM), NM Natural History Museum, and NM State Parks. The team cleaned, mapped, and built three-dimensional models of the dinosaur tracks using aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry. Smallmelo’s Melo King participated in the event as a student and data team lead. The methodologies will be published in a journal article, and the data will be made available in an interactive website.
All results displayed on this page are preliminary, data processing is still underway. Read more about the project on CNM’s website.
GIS
To ensure that the appropriate attributes were collected in the field, Melo collaborated with CNM instructors to design and develop a data model for the database responsible for housing data collection progress and dinosaur track locations digitized by students. Additionally, Melo and her classmates designed a data collection grid over the project area.
Data Collection
Several techniques were used by the team to map the dinosaur tracks including Lidar, photography (aerial and terrestrial), and grid-by-grid paper forms. The terrestrial photos were captured using a methodology derived by Brian Cannon:
Once captured, photogrammetry software was used to process the aerial and terrestrial photos and build three dimensional models. Lastly, Melo was part of a small team that laid out a data collection grid and ground control at the site so that all the data captured could be tied to a unique geographic location. Below is an screenshot from preliminary data processing of terrestrial photos.
Education
As the data team lead, Melo mentored and trained students in creating photogrammetric models from photos collected and interpreting quality of results of photogrammetry models. She also provided feedback to terrestrial/aerial data collection teams.
To make the project’s results reproducible, Melo was heavily involved in the development of standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the collection of aerial, terrestrial, and ground control (GPS) data.