OpenTopography Blog

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

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Category: News

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Geoscience Applications of High-Resolution Digital Topography in Arizona

Posted on Sun, August 01, 2010 by C. Crosby in News • Publications • Research • TLS

The latest edition of the Arizona Geological Survey’s online Arizona Geology magazine has a nice article on recent applications of airborne and terrestrial LiDAR to geoscience research in Arizona written by David Haddad, a graduate student in ASU’s Active Tectonics, Quantitative Structural Geology and Geomorphology research group.  For his MS research, David used LiDAR data from both airborne and terrestrial platforms to characterize the geomorphic settings of precariously balanced rocks in the Granite Dells near Prescott, AZ.  Precariously balanced rocks (PBRs) can be used as negative indicators of strong ground motion caused by earthquakes, and their spatial distribution provides an indication of the intensity of ground shaking in a given location.  For more on PBRs, see David’s other Arizona Geology article: Nature’s Balanced Seismometers.

David’s article provides a nice overview of LiDAR technology, a few nice graphics like the one above, and a good intro to how these data have been applied to his PBR research in Arizona.

Arizona Geology article: High-Resolution Digital Topography in Arizona

Via: Lee Allison’s Arizona Geology blog

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Global Forest Heights Map From NASA LIDAR and MODIS Data

Posted on Wed, July 21, 2010 by C. Crosby in News

A press release from NASA yesterday highlights the first global map of forest canopy heights created from ICESat LiDAR and MODIS data.  The map, produced by Dr. Michael Lefsky at Colorado State University, is the first of its kind generated with a uniform methodology and has important applications for developing global carbon budgets.  Specifically, the map “will help scientists build an inventory of how much carbon the world’s forests store and how fast that carbon cycles through ecosystems and back into the atmosphere”.

The global ICESat LiDAR coverage allows this kind of comprehensive mapping of the forest height globally:

Lidar can capture vertical slices of forest canopy height by shooting pulses of light at the ground and observing how much longer it takes for light to bounce back from the surface than from the top of the forest canopy. Since lidar can penetrate the top layer of forest canopy, it provides a detailed snapshot of the vertical structure of a forest.

“Lidar is unparalleled for this type of measurement,” Lefsky said. “It would have taken weeks or more to collect the same amount of data in the field by counting and measuring tree trunks that lidar can capture in seconds.”

OpenTopography and partners from UNAVCO and the National Snow and Ice Data Center have funding from NASA to provide integrated access to existing NASA LiDAR data products from ICESat and LVIS, as well as on-demand processing capability, and enhanced QA/QC metrics to make these data more easily accessible and usable to a range of scientists.  Once implemented, access to these data will be available through the OpenTopography Portal.  Read more about the NASA LiDAR Access System (NLAS) project.

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NCALM moves to Univ. of Houston

Posted on Mon, April 12, 2010 by C. Crosby in News

The University of Houston put out a press release today - National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping Comes to Houston - announcing that one half of the NSF-supported NCALM LiDAR mapping center has moved to UH (the other half of NCALM remains at University of California, Berkley).  Formerly at University of Florida, NCALM acquires high-resolution topographic data for NSF-researchers.  OpenTopography has worked closely with NCALM on a number of projects, most notably the EarthScope LiDAR project where data were collected by NCALM and are hosted for community access by OpenTopography.

Read the full press release: National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping Comes to Houston

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Golden Gate LiDAR Project

Posted on Mon, April 05, 2010 by C. Crosby in Data • News

Another new LiDAR data collection funded with stimulus dollars that I recently became aware of is the ARRA Golden Gate LiDAR Project.  Led by San Francisco State University and funded by USGS ARRA, this project will collect data in coastal regions around San Francisco:

The project extent is based upon the watershed boundaries for all watersheds that contain the lands of Marin County and San Francisco County. It also includes the watersheds that contain Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  The area of interest includes watersheds that are also located in southern Sonoma County and northern San Mateo County and when combined total ~835 square miles (planimetric estimate) of area. The project area includes the Marin Peninsula and San Francisco Peninsula that form the western edge of San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay.

Like the Northeast ARRA data collection I just posted about, the Golden Gate data sound like they will be collected to the meet the USGS-NGP Base LiDAR Specification with 2m nominal point spacing.  The data will be available via the USGS CLICK archive and will be incorporated into the USGS 1/9 arc-second NED layer.  The project website indicates that data collection may have begun last month.

For the OpenTopography community, these Golden Gate data are likely of great interest given that they expand upon the existing Bay Area LiDAR coverage provided by the OpenTopography-hosted Northern California EarthScope LiDAR and are designed to capture full watersheds.  Although lower resolution than the data collected by EarthScope, these data should be very interesting to a large number of users.

Map of the collection area from the Golden Gate LiDAR project website:

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LiDAR for the Northeast Project Funded

Posted on Mon, April 05, 2010 by C. Crosby in Data • News

A proposal for an extensive LiDAR collection of coastal regions of the Northeastern U.S. (New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine) has been funded by the USGS with American Reinvestment and Recovery Act money.  The proposal, led by the Maine Office of GIS, is to collect LiDAR data over ~13,500 square miles.  MEGIS has an announcement about the funding.  From the LiDAR for the Northeast proposal (PDF):

Full or partial county lidar collections for all coastal areas in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, including many coastal watersheds and subwatersheds. The total area proposed is 13,561 square miles in a continuous swath with no gaps, including all coastal towns in the region, towns adjacent to major tidal rivers, and other adjacent areas deemed important to the stakeholders. Of this area, 8979 square miles is new data, 1056 square miles is being collected by FEMA, and 3526 square miles of other existing data (not in CLICK or NED). Only 58 sq. mi. of this entire region is currently in CLICK and only 410 sq. mi. are in the 1/9th arc-second NED

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Map of the project area from the LiDAR for the Northeast proposal:

Data will be collected to the meet the recently released USGS-NGP Base LiDAR Specification, and thus will have 2m nominal point spacing.  As is required by the ARRA LiDAR RFP, all of these data will eventually end up in the USGS CLICK archive and will be incorporated into the USGS 1/9 arc-second NED layer.

It appears that the proposal pulls together an impressive collection of federal and state agencies and non-profit organizations to build a consortium and generate matching funds.  This looks like a great project and will produce a lot of new and valuable data. 

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ILMF meeting will highlight Haiti LiDAR

Posted on Tue, February 09, 2010 by C. Crosby in 2010 Haiti EQ • Data • News

The International LiDAR Mapping Forum (ILMF), a LiDAR industry conference in Denver next month, has just announced in a press release the addition of two presentations related to LiDAR data collected over Haiti (see this post and this post for previous discussion of Haiti LiDAR).

One presentation will be by Ken Hudnut of the USGS, who will discuss the application of post-earthquake LiDAR to evaluation of the ground rupture - or in this case the lack of rupture - associated with the event:

Imagery of the region damaged by the M 7 Haiti earthquake, including high-resolution photography and airborne LiDAR, has revealed a variety of ground failure that resulted from shaking. Surprisingly, the Enriquillo Fault seems to have not ruptured at the ground surface, so the negative result obtained from imagery has significant implications. The USGS issued a statement, based on imagery analysis, that because it is clear that the rupture of the Enriquillo Fault was clearly farther west than Port-au-Prince, and because rupture was buried deep on the fault, there is a significant risk of not only regular aftershocks, but also the threat of a subsequent large event that could occur even closer to Port-au-Prince. The probability of one or more subsequent earthquakes of M 7 or greater increased by about 3% for the 30 days following 21 January 2010. Although this is a low probability, it would be a potentially very high impact event. High-resolution imagery was crucial to this assessment.

Ken is a friend of OpenTopography and was a co-instructor at our Southern California Earthquake Center-sponsored short course on application of LiDAR data to studying active faults this past December.

The second ILMF presentation will be by representatives of Kucera International Inc. who, in collaboration with the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and ImageCat, with funding from the World Bank, performed a high resolution aerial LiDAR and multispectral survey of primary earthquake damaged areas and fault zones:

Kucera’s presentation will review the performance of the aerial survey, the expedited processing and distribution of the aerial data, and potential future refinement and applications of the data.

I’ll be attending the ILMF meeting and I look forward to both of these presentations.  The Haiti earthquake is an important event in terms of being a model for rapid collection of LiDAR following a large earthquake, and I look forward to hearing about the lesson’s learned by both the science users of the data, and the acquisition and processing team.

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Article highlights application of Yakima EarthScope LiDAR to landslide research

Posted on Tue, February 09, 2010 by C. Crosby in News

The Ellensburg, WA Daily Record News published an article today entitled CWU student Tom Winter studies area’s slide history that discusses research being conducted by a Central Washington University graduate student who is mapping landslides in the Yakima River Canyon near Ellensburg:

Winter, 25, has the goal of gaining a master’s degree in resource management from Central by June and producing a slide hazards map for the canyon’s 20 miles.

He’s not only looking for old landslides, but debris flows when heavy rains have washed rocks and earth down the canyon sides and scoured out deep gullies.

The article references Winter’s use of LiDAR data to enhance his mapping activities:

Winter also uses current topography maps, stomping up and down the canyon and seeing with his own eyes, aerial photos and something called LiDAR — an optical remote sensing technology that uses laser pulses to detect in high resolution very small changes in range, shapes and elevation.

“With LiDAR things just jump out at you that you might not notice because it’s so large,” Winter said.

Given that I’m not aware of other LiDAR data in the Yakima area, I assume that he is using the recently released EarthScope Yakima LiDAR data accessible via OpenTopography for this work.  This is nice example of how providing online access to these powerful data allows them to be widely utilized in a variety of applications. 

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A quick look at NGA LiDAR from Haiti

Posted on Wed, January 27, 2010 by C. Crosby in 2010 Haiti EQ • Data • News

As I pointed out in my last post, there has been a concerted effort by a number of groups to acquire LiDAR data over Haiti in the wake of the January 12th earthquake.  In addition to the Rochester Institute of Technology and Navy groups operating in Haiti, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is also collecting data using the ALIRT instrument (described here I think).  Some NGA LiDAR data products are available via the NGA Haiti Earthquake Crisis Relief site.  The LiDAR data products are available in a somewhat haphazard form via the Haiti Filtered LiDAR subpage.  Most of the “data” on this page are actually PDFs and PowerPoint files showing images of the data.  However, there are a few actual data files - one LAS point cloud file and a few DEMs in 32-bit GeoTIFF format.

Since this is the first post-earthquake data I’ve seen available to the public, I pulled a few of these files and have been looking at them.  Below is a screen capture of the LAS file (320,900 pts), which is described as the National Palace, but appears to actually be data from a neighborhood just NW of the Palace:

(UPDATE 02/04/10 - NGA has apparently removed the actual LAS file)

I gridded the point cloud data above at 25 centimeter resolution and exported it along with the data set footprint to Google Earth.  Shown here:

Download the Google Earth image overlay shown above.

These data are pretty impressive, especially when viewed in tandem with the post-earthquake Google Earth images.  There appears to be misalignment between the lidar and the imagery, but that may have been introduced when I gridded and exported the data to Google Earth (there is no metadata associated with these file, only the coordinate info in the LAS header (UTM z18N)).

The GeoTIFF DEMs produced by NGA and available on the site are also interesting to look at.  Here is a 40 cm DEM overlain in Google Earth:

Download the KMZ file shown above.

Comparison of the LiDAR data above, acquired January 25th, with the Google Earth imagery which was presumably acquired in the days immediately after the earthquake, shows that there is now a set of large tents (field hospital?) in the middle of the athletic fields that isn’t present in the imagery.

It is unclear at this point how much of the data that NGA is collecting over Haiti will be made available to the public.  I hope that they intend release the full data set in an easy to access manner (e.g. all the DEMs, the las files, or both).  OpenTopography has been in contact with NGA and we’ve offered to host whatever portion of this data set they are willing to share with the scientific community and the general public.  Stay tuned.

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Haiti LiDAR

Posted on Fri, January 22, 2010 by C. Crosby in 2010 Haiti EQ • Data • News

Recent reports indicate that there is LiDAR data being collected by a number of groups over Haiti in the wake of the 12 January magnitude 7.0 earthquake.  These data will potentially be powerful for earthquake relief workers and the scientific community, and should be an important geospatial resource in the recovery and rebuilding of Haiti.

This news article describes the work being done by the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command out of Stennis Space Center in Mississippi to acquire LiDAR around Haiti.  These collections are apparently hydrographic surveys of ports and other areas in Haiti using the CHARTS (Compact Hydrographic Airborne Rapid Total Survey) system.  More information about the CHARTS system and the National Coastal Mapping program is available here.

Today, a press release entitled, Rochester Institute of Technology Captures Haiti Disaster With High-Tech Imaging System; World Bank Funds Five-Day Mission, was issued that describes the data collection being conducted by a team out of RIT who are acquiring LiDAR, high-resolution color imagery, and thermal infrared data using a platform called WASP (Wildfire Airborne Sensor Program) designed to detect wildfires.  The press release provides quite a bit of information about the acquisition, data products, and logistics of the collection.  Specifically on the topic of the LiDAR data, the press release states:

The LIDAR capability detects and measures collapsed buildings and standing structures damaged by the earthquake. At the request of the U.S. Geological Survey, Faulring is using LIDAR to map the fault line to estimate how much the earth moved. This information is critical to refinement of earthquake-risk prediction models.

Application of these data to investigations of co-seismic ground rupture is logical and given the tropical vegetation in Haiti I would expect that the data may prove quite useful for locating and documenting surface rupture associated with the earthquake.  This is also a potentially interesting test case for application of LiDAR to post-earthquake scientific investigations, but is not the first time that airborne LiDAR has been collected immediately following an earthquake.  That honor goes to the LiDAR data collected following the 16 October 1999 Hector Mine, CA Earthquake and available for download here.

My understanding is that the RIT WASP data will made publicly available as soon as it has been processed.  At this time I don’t have specific information on how they intend to distribute the data products, but we’ve offered OpenTopography as a potential access point for the data if there is a need to host it someplace.  When we know more about how to access these data we’ll provide an update.

Finally, I understand that the scientific community has deployed at least one terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) instrument to Haiti for post-earthquake investigations.

UPDATE (January 24): Wired Science has a nice article with more information and preliminary images of the RIT LiDAR data discussed above:  New 3-D Aerial Images of Haiti Will Aid Recovery and Research

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USGS LiDAR Funding Opportunity

Posted on Wed, November 04, 2009 by C. Crosby in Data • News

Last week the USGS released its much anticipated LiDAR and Orthoimagery RFP.  The ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) funded RFP will award 15 grants of up to $500,000 each for the “collection and processing of high resolution elevation data and orthoimagery”.  The grant is only open to institutions of higher education and state, local and Indian tribal governments.  Federal agencies and the private sector are not eligible.

Priorities for the grant are relatively specific with a focus on coastal portions of the country: ”Priorities for the program include collecting elevation data over those coastal areas of United States most susceptible to storm and hurricane flooding, earthquake damage, and coastal erosion”.  All data collected by organizations funded via this grant will ultimately be ingested into the USGS National Elevation Dataset (NED) to expand the extent of available 1/9 arc second (roughly 3 meter) topography data.  The announcement also specifies that all raw LiDAR point cloud data will be added to the archive maintained by the USGS Center for LIDAR Information Coordination and Knowledge (CLICK).  The announcement includes the following map, which shows the regions of the country that are deemed highest priority for ARRA topography funds.  The map also shows the extent and status of 1/9 arc second topography in NED - most of which is data derived from state, local and federal LiDAR data collections - and may therefore be interesting for folks curious about where LiDAR data may be available in their region or area of research.  Regional, zoomed views, of the map below can be downloaded as a supplement to the grant announcement.

Although this grant is an exciting opportunity to acquire a significant amount of new LiDAR data, there has been significant debate about the quality of the data specified by the RFP.  The grant announcement specifies “high resolution (1 point per square meter (ppsm)) lidar”, which is significantly lower resolution than the 6-8+ shots per square meter data that is being delivered by projects such as the EarthScope (data hosted here on OpenTopography), and the Oregon and Puget Sound LiDAR Consortia.  Therefore, there is concern that these USGS-funded data will be of less utility to Earth science researchers, especially in areas of steep terrain and dense vegetation.

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