We are under contract for a recently clear cut 40 acre plot of land (stumps in place) and I wanted to get more accurate contours from the property so I can start planning out our future homestead.
I already looked at the USGS contours, the national DEM files which I created contours from, the local DEM files which I created 10ft contours from, etc ... I don't feel any will help me too much as those were taken with the trees in place ... even the latest lidar scan clearly shows features on the land which were not there in person when I walked it since the scan was taken before the clear cutting. (I work with maps for a living so I am pretty familiar with the software used)
My thoughts are to try to map it with a drone using orthography and RTK correction to get 1cm accuracy, smooth that out, and create an action plan from there forward then follow up with several rescans (for just orthography) in the future to track progress / regression etc. I am curious if anyone has done this and what "stack" (to pull a word from the programming world) you use.
I have previously accurately mapped a 1 acre lot using a rotary laser, compass (in this case a suunto tandem), ruler, measuring wheel, and a gridded out printout of the property taken from satellite ... it wasn't too hard but took a while ... it seems like that would take forever on 40 acres lol
Thoughts?