PORTABLE LASER SCANNER FOR MEASURING SOIL SURFACE-ROUGHNESS

A portable scanner was designed to measure soil topography at variable grid spacings down to sub-mm scales. It consisted of an optical transducer for measuring soil surface elevation, a motor-driven X-Y traversing frame, a set of processing and control electronics, and a personal computer. The scanner can be used to digitize surfaces at fine grid spacings and the detailed surface topography can then be used to study surface boundary processes such as soil erosion. -from Authors