The Chases joined forces with NASA and the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) at the University of Houston to map Caracol using airborne lidar, a technology many times more powerful than the radar and satellite data available to Blom. The best ground resolution Blom could obtain in the mid-nineties was about ninety feet; lidar promised a resolution of better than three feet even under the forest canopy.
