Lee County Mosquito Control District (LCMCD) serves approximately 860,000 residents across 804 square miles (208,235 ha) of coastal southwest Florida, including extensive salt marsh, mangrove, and freshwater habitats that support productive populations of Aedes taeniorhynchus (Wiedemann), Culex nigripalpus Theobald, Anopheles spp., and other nuisance/medically important mosquitoes. Accurate mapping of mosquito larval habitats is essential for cost-effective deployment of control measures, particularly in coastal environments where tidal flooding and rainfall interact to create prolific habitat conditions. Traditional ground surveys and legacy elevation datasets often lack the spatial resolution needed to distinguish subtle topographic features that determine flooding extent and duration or stay current with landscape changes following major storm events, leading to over-treatment of nonproductive areas and inefficient resource allocation.

In addition to very dynamic hydrological patterns, Lee County has approximately 56,000 acres of salt marshes that are inaccessible by ground, which is why helicopters are needed to help the District identify areas with mosquito habitat. Remote sensing technologies, including satellite imagery and aerial photography, have been used to identify potential mosquito habitats at regional scales, but these methods typically provide limited vertical accuracy and may not resolve small-scale topographic variation critical for predicting tidal and rainfall inundation. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology, a technology used by NASA to measure the lunar surface during the Apollo 15 mission, can be used to emit laser pulses to measure the Earth’s surface beneath vegetation, producing detailed digital elevation models that reveal where water is likely to collect following rainfall or tidal flooding.