Teaching Earth Science With High-Resolution Topography
August 5-7, 2009
San Diego Supercomputer Center

Are you an earth science instructor interested in using real world scientific data to better communicate concepts to your students? This workshop is designed to introduce educators to the use of cutting-edge earth science data, web-based data access and processing tools, and data visualization to enhance their teaching of fundamental earth science concepts.
The GEON OpenTopography Portal provides access to high-resolution topographic data from LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) that cover a variety of geologic features and landscapes. The Portal provides access to a suite of LiDAR data products and visualizations typically reserved for high-level research and presents an excellent opportunity to bring these exciting data into the classroom. These real world, cutting-edge, digital topographic data could be used in the classroom to allow students to explore geologic processes, landforms, and natural hazards. As a Teragrid Science Gateway, the OpenTopography Portal harnesses sophisticated cyberinfrastructure to manage and provide access to these exciting and challenging data.

Earth science educators at the community college and undergraduate level are invited to participate in a workshop to be held at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, August 5-7, 2009. This will be a small, focused, hands-on workshop where participants will have one-on-one access to expert geoscientists as well as experts in learning technology. During the course of the 3-day workshop, participants will be introduced to LiDAR topography and the OpenTopography Portal. They will then develop and demonstrate lesson plans and activities around OpenTopography and high-resolution LiDAR topography. Educators will be encouraged to brainstorm and develop ways that the Portal and data could be easily integrated into their standard curriculum using simple and freely available software such as Google Earth. Following the workshop, participants will be asked to use OpenTopography and the data it hosts in courses they teach at their home institutions and, we hope, share lessons learned as well as curriculum and teaching tools developed with the larger OpenTopography and earth science education communities.

For more information, including possible travel stipends, please contact Chris Crosby (ccrosby@sdsc.edu) or Margaret Smeekens (margaret@sdsc.edu).

1. Google Earth.  The easiest way to explore this dataset, users can view unfiltered (with vegetation) and filtered ("bare earth") hillshade images within Google Earth from two different illumination angles.  The hillshade KMZ file is available for downloaded at http://opentopography.org/kml.

2. GIS.  For more advanced applications, filtered ("bare earth,” fg*) and unfiltered (ug*) 0.5 m resolution digital elevation models in Arc Binary grid format are also available for download as 1 km² tiles.  Users can browse and download available tiles via an interactive map available at http://opentopography.org/dems.

Additional ISB LiDAR data products will become available in the coming months, including coverage of the northern strand of the Nephi Segment of the Wasatch Fault, as well as point cloud access and custom DEM generation capability for all ISB coverage using GEON developed cyberinfrastructure.  A metadata document for this project is also currently in preparation.

We would like to thank the National Park Service, with special thanks to the Geology, GIS and fire cache personnel at Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, for their support and collaboration.

Kind regards,
David Phillips and the GeoEarthScope LiDAR team

Primary funding agency
- National Science Foundation

Project management
- UNAVCO

Data acquisition, processing and distribution
- National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM): LiDAR data
collection and processing
- Ohio State University (OSU): GPS data collection and processing
- Arizona State University (ASU): data distribution and analysis tools
- San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC): data distribution and analysis tools

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego are studying how to manage and process massive spatial data sets on large-scale compute clusters. The specific test case is analysis of high-resolution topographic data sets from airborne LiDAR surveys, which are of great interest to many Earth scientists. Providing efficient access and analytic capabilites will have broad impact beyond the geosciences because the techniques are likely to be applicable to other types of large data sets.

The full press release: National Science Foundation Awards Millions to Fourteen Universities for Cloud Computing Research

• Bodega San Andreas and adjacent marine terraces
• Southern Hayward Fault
• Paicines Calaveras
• East Bay PUC data

All Northern California GeoEarthScope LiDAR data produts (point cloud, tile DEMs, and Google Earth hillshades) can be accessed via the OpenTopography Portal at: http://www.opentopography.org/data

We anticipate delivery of additional GeoEarthScope LiDAR topography in the coming weeks and will release those data via OpenTopography as soon as possible.

The full citation of the article is:
Prentice, Carol S, Christopher J. Crosby, Caroline S. Whitehill, J Ramόn Arrowsmith, Kevin P. Furlong, David A. Phillips, 17 February 2009, Illuminating Northern California’s Active Faults, Eos, Vol. 90, No. 7, p. 55-56.

A PDF of the article is available online to AGU members

• San Gregorio fault
• Little Salmon fault
• Maacama & East Willits faults
• Rodger Creek fault

Read the full news item at here: San Diego Supercomputer Center Begins Cloud Computing Research Using the Google-IBM CluE Cluster

Please address questions or comment to J. Luke Blair (lblair@usgs.gov - USGS, Earthquake Hazards Program) and/or Chris Crosby (ccrosby@sdsc.edu - GEON Project, San Diego Supercomputer Center).

The GeoEarthScope Northern California LiDAR data were acquired as part of the EarthScope Facility project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).  More information on GeoEarthScope is available at: http://facility.unavco.org/project_support/es/geoearthscope/