A Portal to High-Resolution Topography Data and Tools

  

Data    Tools    Site

Community Support

Beyond hosting data, OpenTopography supports the NSF Earth science high-resolution topography user community through a number of activities:

    OpenTopography Tool Registry:  This system allows community members to register software they have developed for various high-resolution topography and bathymetry data manipulation, processing, and analysis tasks.  These tools can then be discovered and utilized by others in the community.

    Professional training and undergraduate / graduate education via short courses:  OpenTopography has led (or co-led) a number of short courses aimed at training faculty, graduate students, and Earth science professionals on LiDAR technology, data handling and processing, and analysis techniques.  All short course materials (slides, handouts, sample data, etc) are available online through our short courses page, and provide an excellent resource for users interested in getting up to speed with these data.

    Community news and information via the OpenTopography blog:  OpenTopography maintains an active blog which provides updates on meeting sessions, workshops, digital topography-related news and information, and technical topics.

    Social Networking:  Through active presence on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and through the OpenTopography discussion forum, we are fostering the development of a community of users who share ideas, answer each other’s questions, and interact around the theme of applications of high-resolution topography data to the Earth sciences.

    Education and Outreach:  The depiction of landforms and the effects of surface processes provided by high resolution topography, as well as knowledge about mapping and technology provide powerful material for educators. We have targeted educational standards for secondary school as well as undergraduate learning with examples from high resolution topography. So far, this effort has been in a strong collaboration with the Communication, Education, and Outreach program at the Southern California Earthquake Center.