The Rhode Island Stone Wall Mapping Project is the first comprehensive inventory of the state's stone walls. Using ArcGIS Pro, the project developed an original methodology to extract linear wall features from the 2022 Rhode Island Statewide LiDAR dataset using relative height filtering of the point cloud. The resulting dataset documents over 5,200 miles of stone walls, revealing historical land-use patterns tied to agriculture, settlement, topography, and geology. With the mapping phase complete, the project has transitioned to research and outreach. This includes a pilot citizen science effort to use mobile data collection and Python to gather field-validated data for future machine learning applications. This presentation offers a case study on the challenges of linear feature extraction from LiDAR, and will discuss the limitations of automated approaches, the role of manual digitization, and practical strategies for operating low-budget, community-driven geospatial projects.
