Dr. Yuri Rzhanov, Research Professor
Dr. Kim Lowell, Research Scientist
UNH Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping
Friday, January 30, 2026, 3:10pm
Chase 105
Abstract
Airborne lidar is a primary source of information about the bathymetry in the shallow coastal areas where sonar is of little use. The vast amount of data collected by lidar is a blessing and a curse. Extremely dense lidar measurements are also exceptionally noisy, and thus their classification by the NOAA remote sensing division is difficult and often problematic. We propose an alternative way of detecting bathymetry from lidar data by adapting a 2-D concentric ellipse-based algorithm for ICESat-2 to an ellipsoid-based 3-D algorithm applicable to airborne lidar tiles. Geolocated lidar measurements identified as bathymetry by the new method are compared with those provided by NOAA.
Bios
Yuri Rzhanov earned his doctorate in semiconductor physics in 1983 from the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1991 he received the Fellowship from the Royal Society of London to work at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh on nonlinear phenomena in optics. He has worked at the CCOM/JHC since its inception specializing in underwater optics, 3D object reconstruction, and remote sensing.
Kim Lowell is a Research Scientist at the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping (CCOM), an Adjunct Professor in Analytics and Data Science, and an Affiliate Research Professor in the Earth Systems Research Centre. His primary focus at CCOM is the application of machine learning, deep learning, and other data analytics techniques to improve the accuracy of bathymetric charts. He has considerable experience in the analysis of geospatial information to address land management issues using GIS, spatial statistics, and optical, radar, and lidar imagery while also accounting for uncertainties inherent in those data. Prior to joining CCOM, he was a Program Manager for a nationwide (Australian) collaborative geospatial research consortium whose members included private companies, government agencies, and universities. He also has been the Director of a group of hydrologically based landscape modellers for a state Department of Primary Industries (Victoria, Australia). Prior to that he was a tenured Full Professor in the Faculty of Forestry and Geomatic Engineering at Université Laval (Québec, Canada). Kim has an M.Sc. (University of Vermont, USA) and a Ph.D. (Canterbury University, New Zealand) in Forest Biometrics, and an M.Sc. in Data Science and Analytics (University of New Hampshire, USA).
