During a field campaign in spring 2010, Terrestrial LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) was used in different limestone caves in northern Morocco to reconstruct cave morphology, geometry and dimension, as well as to support archaeologists in determining cave volume and cave shape. TLS is a stationary terrestrial remote sensing method based on contact-less scanning of the object.
Whereas Ifri Oudadane was scanned from 12 different scan positions with an average resolution of 15 mm, at Ifri n’Ammar 18 different scan positions were used, with an average point distance of 7 mm. Following data acquisition, transformation, cleaning and processing, first calculations and morphological reconstructions were undertaken. Terrestrial LiDAR has shown that cave morphology of Ifri Oudadane is very complex with contorted cave walls, whilst Ifri n’Ammar has straight cave walls with smooth surfaces. Regarding approximations the volume of each cave (based on a cuboid with maximum extents of x, y and z), we can state that Ifri Oudadane has a volume of c. 728 m3 and Ifri n’Ammar a volume of c. 2000 m3.