OpenTopography Blog

Information and discussion related to high-resolution LiDAR topography for the Earth sciences

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Charting the Future of Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) in the Earth Sciences and Related Fields

Posted on Sun, August 07, 2011 by Chris Crosby in TLS • Workshops

Community Workshop Announcement:

CHARTING THE FUTURE OF TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNING (TLS) IN THE EARTH SCIENCES AND RELATED FIELDS

This workshop will be held at the Millennium Harvest House Hotel in Boulder, Colorado on October 17-19, 2011.

Workshop registration is now open. To register and apply for support please visit: http://www.unavco.org/community/meetings-events/2011/tls/tls.html

Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS), a.k.a. terrestrial LiDAR, is part of a suite of new geodetic imaging technologies that are becoming increasingly important to the Earth science and related communities for use in myriad research applications. The overarching goals for this workshop are community oriented and include:

• Engage TLS users across Earth science subdisciplines and related fields such as engineering, ecology, and anthropology.
• Seed planning that is inspired by recent innovative science applications.
• Identify future TLS research directions and the appropriate structures, resources and collaborations to support them.
• Define user requirements to guide community members, facilities and sponsors in planning and seeking resources to provide research-grade data products as efficiently and effectively as possible.

To advance these goals, the following thematic workshop sessions are planned:

• TLS science applications.
• TLS data processing and analysis.
• TLS data and metadata formats and standards.
• Best structures and practices for community-oriented facilities providing TLS hardware, software, and data.
• Comprehensive outlook and plan to support future TLS developments and community requirements.

We particularly seek to draw upon the experience and expertise of researchers who are familiar with the current capabilities and challenges of TLS technologies and methodologies and who are interested in advancing these goals. To help represent a broader target audience and to enrich and diversify the workshop’s planning, content and deliverables, the Organizing Committee is recruiting community representatives to serve as additional organizing committee members and/or session chairs.

This workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and organized by UNAVCO. Workshop deliverables are meant to be relevant to TLS users at all levels, from individual investigators to large scale initiatives, and will be particularly useful as strategic aids to help NSF supported facilities such as UNAVCO, INTERFACE, OpenTopography and NCALM best meet the needs of the research community now and in the future.

The registration deadline is September 2, 2011.

On behalf of the workshop Organizing Committee, thank you for your interest and we hope to see you in Boulder in October!

David Phillips

WORKSHOP ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

David Phillips, UNAVCO
John Oldow, University of Texas at Dallas
Doug Walker, University of Kansas
Ramon Arrowsmith, Arizona State University
Chuck Meertens, UNAVCO

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David A. Phillips, Ph.D.
Geodetic Imaging Project Manager
UNAVCO
6350 Nautilus Drive, Boulder, CO 80301
Tel: 303-381-7471, Fax: 303-381-7451

http://www.unavco.org

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Lidar at GSA 2011 Meeting

Posted on Sat, July 23, 2011 by Chris Crosby in Education • Meetings • News

The Geological Society of America annual meeting abstract deadline of July 26th, 2011 is fast approaching.  Below are sessions and short courses at the GSA 2011 meeting in Minneapolis that will focus on lidar data in the Earth sciences:

Topical Sessions:

T114. Measuring the True Shape of the Earth: Quantitative and Qualitative Applications of Terrestrial LiDAR
GSA Archaeological Geology Division; GSA Structural Geology and Tectonics Division; GSA Geoinformatics Division; GSA Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division; GSA Environmental and Engineering Geology Division
Ian P. Madin, Donald E. Luman

This session will focus on new efforts and approaches to extracting quantitative and qualitative geologic and environmental features from terrestrial LiDAR data.

Engineering Geology; Environmental Geoscience; Geomorphology

T149. Virtual Reality in Geoscience Education (Digital Posters)
GSA Geoscience Education Division; GSA Geoscience Education Division; GSA Structural Geology and Tectonics Division; GSA Geoinformatics Division; GSA Planetary Geology Division; National Association of Geoscience Teachers; Google Inc.; Oxford University Press; Minnesota Planetarium Society
Declan G. De Paor, Steven J. Whitmeyer, John E. Bailey

Showcase your geo-visualizations using the medium of the future - the digital poster session. Presenters will hook up their own PC/Mac laptops to one of 20 flat screens.
This session covers virtual reality in formal and informal geoscience education at all levels: Google Earth, OmniGlobe, LiDAR, GigaPan, full-dome digital planetaria, caves, and resources for handheld devices, such as iPads and smart phones.

Geoscience Education; Geoinformatics; Structural Geology

T197. Seeing the True Shape of Earth: Quantitative and Qualitative Applications of Airborne Lidar
GSA Archaeological Geology Division; GSA Structural Geology and Tectonics Division; GSA Geoinformatics Division; GSA Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division; GSA Environmental and Engineering Geology Division
Ian P. Madin, D.E. Luman

This session will focus on new efforts and approaches to extract quantitative and qualitative geologic and environmental features from terrestrial and airborne LiDAR data.

Geoinformatics; Remote Sensing/Geographic Info System; Quaternary Geology

Short Courses:

510. Terrestrial Laser Scanning (Ground-Based LiDAR) Methods and Applications in Geologic Research and Education.
Sat., 8 Oct., 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
$33; includes lunch. Limit: 20. CEU: 0.9.
Cosponsor: UNAVCO.
David Phillips, UNAVCO; John Oldow, Univ. of Texas at Dallas; Carlos Aiken, Univ. of Texas at Dallas.

This course will present terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), also known as ground-based LiDAR, workflows and best practices for the acquisition and processing of TLS data; an overview of various TLS platforms; and examples of science and education applications. This one-day workshop will consist of lectures and hands-on application of TLS equipment and data processing. TLS provides very high-resolution images over relatively small areas, is relatively inexpensive to acquire and has been used successfully to support a wide range of geoscience investigations, from outcrop mapping to deformation monitoring. Limited financial support is available for students.

514. Introduction to the Acquisition, Visualization, and Interpretation of Airborne LiDAR Data.
Sat., 8 Oct., 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
$110. Limit: 30. CEU: 0.9.
Cosponsors: OpenTopography; GSA Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division; GSA Structural Geology and Tectonics Division; GSA Environmental and Engineering Geology Division; GSA Geoinformatics Divisions.
Ian Madin, Oregon Dept. of Geology and Mineral Industries; Chris Crosby, Univ. of California at San Diego.

This course provides and introduction to the acquisition and use of airborne LiDAR data. It covers LiDAR collection fundamentals, how to contract for good data, where to find data and tools, how to visualize point and grid data, and how to do simple feature extraction from LiDAR-derived DEMs. The course will use ESRI ArcGIS and USFS Fusion software, and each student will have a dedicated workstation and real world data to use in hands-on exercises.

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Death Valley - Fish Lake Valley Lidar Update

Posted on Sat, July 23, 2011 by Chris Crosby in Data

There has been some discussion recently regarding the status of the Death Valley-Fish Lake Valley lidar dataset collected on behalf of Principle Investigator Dr. James Dolan (USC) under the National Science Foundation GeoEarthScope project.  These lidar data cover the Death Valley-Fish Lake Valley (DV-FLV) fault system on the California-Nevada border and are the last of the EarthScope funded lidar data to be made available through OpenTopography.  The DV‐FLV lidar data were collected by NCALM under the pre‐community driven GeoEarthScope funding structure (GeoEarthScope Lidar Working Group report [pdf]) and thus fell under the standard two‐year embargo period afforded to NCALM data collected for NSF PIs.

In April, 2010, OpenTopography approached Dr. Dolan to obtain these data for incorporation into the already publicly available EarthScope lidar data catalog hosted by OpenTopography.  Other than the DV‐FLV dataset, all EarthScope funded lidar data have been publicly available in point cloud, DEM, and Google Earth form via OpenTopography since initial delivery by NCALM. Dr. Dolan granted permission for the data to be hosted by OpenTopography and the dataset was sent to OpenTopography in June, 2010 by Dr. Kurt Frankel (Georgia Tech).

However, a detailed inspection of the DV‐FLV dataset by OpenTopography staff revealed several significant issues with the dataset related to the initial dataset collection and partial re‐survey by NCALM. OpenTopography determined that the issues with the dataset were sufficient enough to not meet our standards of community data quality and documentation, and thus the data should not be shared until issues were resolved. In brief, the issues identified included:

• Initial data collection apparently has significant corduroy and positioning problems. A later, smaller, data collection was performed to fill in with better data. As one would expect, collection areas are not perfectly overlapping.
• Data schemas and attributes are for the two collections are different. Initial collect was ascii XYZ and delivered as separate files for filtered and unfiltered points. Second collect is TXYZI format and unclassified.
• There is a large positional difference between the first and second collections, including a possible across survey tilt in the dataset. These issues make it very difficult to merge the two datasets.
• Incomplete delivery of data for the second survey. Point cloud data products delivered to Dolan by NCALM do not cover the full survey region.  Further, the 2nd delivery is lacking metadata.

Incomplete data delivery:  yellow tiles represent data delivered vs. magenta outline which is extent of re-survey.  The green outlined hillshade image is the extent of the original survey.

Upon identification of the dataset issues described above, an email was sent to NCALM to request assistance with data re‐processing. NCALM determined that these data did have significant problems and that they should be re‐processed using NCALM’s newest kinematic navigation processing methodology. In November, 2010 when NCALM announced plans to re‐process the dataset, they were unable to provide a timeline on account of other, higher‐priority, data processing tasks.

At this time OpenTopography is still awaiting a reprocessed dataset from NCALM to post.  Both Dr. Dolan and OpenTopography have a complete copy of these data and would be happy to share them with users who are interested in working with these data in their current state.  Please contact Dr. James Dolan or OpenTopography if you have interest in these data.

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Lidar Short Course at 2011 Geological Society of America Meeting

Posted on Sat, July 16, 2011 by Chris Crosby in Meetings • Workshops

Ian Madin (Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries) and I will be teaching an introductory lidar short course at the 2011 Geological Society of America annual meeting in Minneapolis in October. 

Details from the GSA Short Course page:

514. Introduction to the Acquisition, Visualization, and Interpretation of Airborne LiDAR Data

Sat., 8 Oct., 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
$110. Limit: 30. CEU: 0.9.
Cosponsors: OpenTopography; GSA Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division; GSA Structural Geology and Tectonics Division; GSA Environmental and Engineering Geology Division; GSA Geoinformatics Divisions.
Ian Madin, Oregon Dept. of Geology and Mineral Industries; Chris Crosby, Univ. of California at San Diego.

This course provides and introduction to the acquisition and use of airborne LiDAR data. It covers LiDAR collection fundamentals, how to contract for good data, where to find data and tools, how to visualize point and grid data, and how to do simple feature extraction from LiDAR-derived DEMs. The course will use ESRI ArcGIS and USFS Fusion software, and each student will have a dedicated workstation and real world data to use in hands-on exercises.

In this one-day course we’ll emphasize the basics of lidar technology, the overall data collection, processing and analysis workflow, and will provide a hands-on introduction to working with both point cloud and gridded data products.  The course is appropriate for faculty, graduate students, and geoscience professionals who are interested in applying lidar topography data to their work.

This course will be similar to the one we taught at the 2009 GSA meeting in Portland.  Materials from that course can be found in the OpenTopography Short Courses section.  The 2009 course was at capacity, so register early.

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AGU 2011 Session: High-Resolution Topographic Data Processing, Analysis, and Visualization

Posted on Wed, July 06, 2011 by Chris Crosby in Meetings

We invite you to submit an abstract to the following 2011 American Geophysical Union Meeting session this fall.  The deadline for abstract submissions is August 4th.

EP13: High-Resolution Topographic Data Processing, Analysis, and Visualization: Emerging Techniques and Applications

High-resolution topographic data collected via airborne and terrestrial laser scanning (lidar) have stimulated new results in the areas of surface processes, hazards, tectonics, and ecology. However, significant bottlenecks to data access, processing, and analysis remain. This session emphasizes technical advancements in high-resolution topographic (and bathymetric) data management, processing, analysis, and visualization, as well as related applications. We invite contributions on software and algorithm development, high-performance data processing and visualization, and emerging analysis techniques.

Sponsor: Earth and Planetary Surface Processes (EP)
Co-Sponsor(s): Geodesy (G), Hydrology (H), Earth and Space Science Informatics (IN)

Conveners:
Christopher Crosby
San Diego Supercomputer Center, UC San Diego

J Ramon Arrowsmith
Arizona State University

Michael Oskin
UC Davis

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Remembering Kurt Frankel

Posted on Tue, July 05, 2011 by Chris Crosby in News

Dr. Kurt Frankel was killed on July 2, 2011 while on a bicycle ride in northern Florida. This is unbelievably tragic and very sad news. Our thoughts and great memories of him go out to his family, friends and colleagues.  The memorial below has been distributed via email to the Earth science community by several of his colleagues.

Kurt shared our enthusiasm for tectonics and geomorphology especially when viewed with the fine lens of high-resolution topography. Kurt was an advocate for OpenTopography and was very active in the Earth science lidar community.  He organized several high-profile sessions on high-resolution topography, faulting and tectonic geomorphology at recent national meetings, and was the chair of the steering committee for the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping.  We have submitted papers to a special issue of Geosphere on lidar topography that he and Ian Madin were editing. Kurt also was working with us to build bridges between NCALM and OpenTopography with a real sense of advancing the community of scientific users of these data by establishing strong collaboration between the two endeavors.

We feel fortunate to have spoken with Kurt just last week during a phone conference where his deep voice, calming sense of humor, and positive outlook were evident and appreciated.

While Kurt was ambitious and confident, he was also modest, serious, and kind. Running into Kurt at meetings and workshop was always a treat, and it was great to talk science as well as to swap jokes, gossip and stories.

Kurt was a great guy and we will miss him immensely.

Respectfully,

J Ramon Arrowsmith and Christopher J. Crosby

Dear Colleagues,

It is with sadness that we write to inform you of the untimely passing of Kurt L. Frankel, Assistant Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA.  Kurt was killed during a morning bicycle ride this past Saturday (02 July) when he was struck from behind by a motorist. Kurt was 33 years old.

Kurt was born and raised in Cleveland Ohio.  He earned a B.S. in Geology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2000, followed by a M.S. in Earth and Environmental Science at Lehigh University in 2002, and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 2007. Since then he has been in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Technological Institute in Atlanta, GA.

Kurt’s research focused on tectonic geomorphology and cosmogenic geochronology.  He worked extensively in the Great Basin, California, Turkey, Italy, Mongolia, and the Appalachians.  His undergraduate thesis described the slip of several Holocene fault scarps in Death Valley, California. For his M.S. work he developed a set of mountain front topographic metrics to quantify the long-term slip rates of normal-fault-bound mountain fronts.  His Ph.D. work involved novel applications of LiDAR and cosmogenic dating to compare geologic and GPS-geodetic rates of slip in the Eastern California Shear Zone.  During his short, but prolific career, Kurt organized field trips, co-directed two Keck undergraduate projects, chaired meeting topical sessions, was on the steering committee for NCALM, served on an NSF panel, published widely in international journals, and was in the process of building a nationally-recognized program in tectonic geomorphology at Georgia Tech.

Kurt was a field geologist who loved the outdoors.  He was an avid runner, biker, and hiker. For everyone who had the honor and pleasure of working with Kurt, he will be remembered for his infectious enthusiasm, quick laugh, and devotion to his projects, colleagues, and students.  He leaves behind his wife of two years, Stephanie Briggs, who he met and was committed to since their undergraduate days at UNC-CH.

Memorial contributions can be made in Kurt’s name to the Department of Geological Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill, c/o Arts and Sciences Foundation, CB #6115, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-6115

Respectfully submitted by Karl W. Wegmann, Patrick W. Belmont, Frank J. Pazzaglia

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AGU Session: New Constraints on Active Fault Zones from Laser Scanning, Satellite Interferometry

Posted on Fri, June 17, 2011 by Chris Crosby in Meetings

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to submit an abstract to the following 2011 AGU Session this Fall, deadline for abstract submissions is 4th August:

T36: New Constraints on Active Fault Zones from Integration of Laser Scanning, Satellite Interferometry and other Earth Imaging Methods

Convergence between geodesy, geospatial, earth imaging and geophysical technologies are enabling new insights into active deformation zones. We invite scientists who are integrating these tools and data sets to investigate active faulting to submit contributions on:- 1. High-resolution fault geometry and slip data from offset and deformed landforms using airborne and terrestrial laser scan data 2. Reconciliation of near-field and off-fault deformation fields for recent earthquakes 3. Geophysical constraints on 3D structure of neotectonic zones coupled with surface deformation 4. Modelling studies that use these data sets to constrain the earthquake cycle.

Conveners:
Christopher Crosby
San Diego Supercomputer Center, UC, San Diego
85.8822.5458
ccrosby@sdsc.edu

Kenneth McCaffrey
Univ Durham, UK
011-44-191-334-2322
k.j.w.mccaffrey@durham.ac.uk

Ioannis Papanikolaou
Agri Univ, Athens, Greece
i.papanikolaou@ucl.ac.uk

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New Idaho Lidar Website

Posted on Wed, June 15, 2011 by Chris Crosby in Data • News

Nancy Glenn, director of Idaho State’s Boise Center Aerospace Lab (BCAL) and a member of the OpenTopography Advisory Committee, wrote to let us know about a new Idaho LiDAR Consortium website that her group has just released.  The website provides links to news about ILC activities, research, and software tools - including the BCAL lidar tools for ENVI.  The site provides a nice map interface to view ILC data coverage - including planned data collections - and to download data products such as DEMs for certain datasets.

OpenTopography is working with Nancy to ingest a portion of the ILC point cloud data into OpenTopography - the data are currently in our ingestion queue and we hope to have them online soon.

Screen cap - http://www.idaholidar.org/data:

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Tahoe Standard DEM Data

Posted on Wed, June 08, 2011 by Chris Crosby in Data • OpenTopography Updates

The final piece of the Lake Tahoe Lidar dataset - standard digital elevation model (DEM) and intensity rasters - are now available for download from the OpenTopography standard DEM page.  These products, produced by Watershed Sciences, the vendor who performed the Tahoe data collection, consist of three separate data layers all at 0.5 meter resolution in the ERDAS Imagine (.IMG) format:

1. Highest hit DEM
2. Hydro enforced bare earth DEM
3. 8-bit intensity raster

We’ve packaged the data based on the USGS quarter quadrangle (3.75 minute) naming conventions used by Watershed Sciences (Tile index file in shapefile format).  Thus, each quarter quad .zip file contains the three grid data products noted above.  For example:

39120A22.zip corresponds to USGS quarter quad 39120A22 and contains the following three grid products stored in sub-directories:
- hh_39120A22 (highest hit)
- he_39120A22 (hydro enforced bare earth)
- int_39120A22 (intensity grids)

There are 55 quarter quads worth of data in the Lake Tahoe dataset, for a total of ~17 GB of data (zipped).  The OpenTopography standard DEM download interface uses a Java applet to automate the download.  These are large data files so patience and bandwidth are required. 

Examples images derived from the products contained in 39120A22.zip (the quarter quad that corresponds to the Homewood Mountain Ski Area):

Hillshade of highest hit DEM

Hillshade of hydro-enforced bare earth DEM

Intensity raster

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Tahoe Lidar Imagery in Google Earth

Posted on Tue, May 03, 2011 by Chris Crosby in Data • Google Earth • OpenTopography Updates

As we announced last week, lidar data for the whole Lake Tahoe basin are now available via OpenTopography.  Over the past week this dataset has seen a quite a bit of traffic, with over 160 jobs run (10+ billion points processed) by more than 50 unique users.  However, our experience indicates that a large number of people just want to look at these data, and processing point cloud data to DEMs is clearly not the most efficient way to go about this.  So, as I’ve done in the past for many of the larger datasets OpenTopography hosts, I ran the whole Tahoe Basin dataset through a routine to generate lidar derived imagery (hillshades and “slopeshade” images) that can be viewed in Google Earth.  The resulting KMZ file can now be downloaded via our Lidar Derived Imagery in Google Earth page. 

The file provides access to four layers of imagery, all at half meter pixel resolution:  45 and 315 degree sun angle hillshades of the hydro enforced bare earth grid, a slopeshade of the hydro bare earth grid, and a 315 degree sun angle hillshade of the highest hit (vegetation, buildings etc) surface.  See images below for an illustration of the four imagery layers.

Once you download and open the KMZ file in Google Earth, the imagery is streamed from OpenTopography servers at San Diego Supercomputer Center to the Google Earth client for viewing.  This is a large dataset (~14 GB of imagery) so initial display of the imagery can be sluggish, especially if your internet connection is not great.  As you browse the data Google Earth fills its cache, and browsing speeds should pick up.

This set of imagery took somewhere in the neighborhood of 96 hours of time on my workstation to generate.  But it is an excellent method for reducing an otherwise massive dataset down to something that is relatively easy for anyone with a computer, a network connection and Google Earth to access:

• Original Tahoe lidar point cloud dataset = 325 GB of LAS data (12.4 billion points)
• Tahoe Basin half meter DEMs generated from point cloud data (bare earth + highest hit) = 64 GB
• Four layers of imagery (pngs) tiled and pyramided for display in Google Earth = 14 GB

So, through this approach a 325 GB dataset is reduced to something small enough to be delivered dynamically across the network to users with a widely available, free, and familiar and intuitive client.  It is important to note that the Google Earth imagery layers are not meant to be a substitute for going back to the actual elevation data to perform your scientific analysis; but for initial synoptic browsing, site selection, and education and outreach applications it is hard to beat the Google Earth approach.

Check out the images below, download the Tahoe Lidar Imagery KMZ file, and enjoy these amazing data.

For more information about the Lake Tahoe Basin Lidar Dataset, please see the initial OpenTopography news item HERE

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