LiDAR intensity

For those of us interested in LiDAR the in the scan blog is one of the best resources out there. The recent post on intensity was fantastic, but I was very surprised to see that conclusion of the post was that intensity is not a particularly useful LiDAr attribute. I was surprised because we have made rather extensive use of LiDAR intensity data over the past few months for our high resolution land cover mapping work. I should note that I am in no way a LiDAR expert, just an end user. We've found LiDAR intensity data to be particularly effective for impervious surface mapping. We are just wrapping up a land cover project in Rockville, MD that made use of both imagery and LiDAR intensity data.

Color infrared (CIR) aerial imagery acquired in 2007 (leaf on):
LiDAR intensity data acquired in 2008 (leaf off):
The paved paths in the golf course, while visible in the aerial imagery, are much more easily distinguished in the LiDAR intensity image.

We take a data fusion approach to automated feature extraction in which LiDAR and imagery data are integrated. Using the Definiens/eCogniton software suite we build an expert system to automatically extract features based on the properties of both the LiDAR and the imagery.
The end result is quite good (keep in mind that at a scale of ~1:300 we are zoomed in far beyond the scale at which either the imagery or the LiDAR data is accurate to).
LiDAR data was prepped using QT Modeler.