OT Blog
Information and discussion related to high-resolution lidar topography for the Earth sciences
Jan 23, 2010
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... more
Jan 20, 2010
I'm a bit late on this, but the December 1, 2009, Geomorphology special volume: Understanding earth surface processes from remotely sensed digital terrain models, edited by Paolo Tarolli, J Ramon Arrowsmith and Enrique Vivoni is an excellent collection of papers related to the study of geomorphic processes with terrestrial laser scanning, airborne lidar, and satellite-based topographic remote sensing.
Ramon kindly provides a link to the volume's preface for those who are interested.
Jan 11, 2010
An interesting Lidar-oriented session at the AAPG Rocky Mountain Section Meeting in Durango Colorado June 13-16, 2010. Announcement via the GEOMOD-LIDAR-L and ASU LIDAR listservs:
Greetings all,
The AAPG Rocky Mountain Section Meeting will be held in Durango Colorado June 13-16, 2010. In addition to a broad range of technical sessions, the meeting features a session "Multi-scale Observations and the Application of Remoting Sensing and Lidar to Rocky Mountain Petroleum Exploration". This technical session is being co-chaired by Tim F. Wawrzyniec (tfw@unm.edu) and Gary Weissmann (weissman@... more
Jan 6, 2010
The ASPRS LAS format has become the standard for delivery of lidar point cloud data. However, because LAS is a binary format, a reader of some kind is necessary to ingest the data, visualize it, or perform additional analysis. Many of the major GIS software packages now support LAS (e.g. ArcGIS) and all of the commercial lidar specific software read and write LAS data. Some users however lack access to software that will read the LAS format and thus would like to view lidar point cloud data in ascii format. In these situations I typically recommend the excellent and free LAStools (or... more
Nov 20, 2009
OpenTopography is taking advantage of the expected lower than normal visitor traffic over the upcoming holiday week to make some site updates. We will be rolling out a new logo, site skin, and modified navigation among other things. We apologize in advance if you visit over the next week or so and things seem a little off - rest assured that the site should be back to normal by the first week in December. Here's a sneak peek at what the site will look like when we are done:
Also in the coming weeks, OpenTopography plans to release quite a bit more data and to roll out some new... more
Nov 4, 2009
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... more
Oct 6, 2009
A few weeks ago I wrote a post on the release of Oregon's LiDAR Data and Map Series. Now, Ian Madin at DOGAMI reports that they have released a new LiDAR data viewer to allow the general public to easily view the data and for GIS users to preview the data before purchasing it.
The new Orgeon LiDAR viewer can be accessed here:
http://www.oregongeology.org/sub/lidardataviewer/index.htm
The viewer allows users to see hillshade and slopeshade images and contours derived from lidar collected by DOGAMI with Oregon Lidar Consortium funding. The viewer currently has data from three surveys,... more
Sep 30, 2009
NCALM's annual announcement for their seed proposals went out yesterday via various email listservs. This an an excellent opportunity for graduate students to obtain free LiDAR data for an area related to their research.
The National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) invites graduate students who are interested in research grade airborne laser swath mapping (ALSM or lidar) data to make use of the center's facilities through the Seed projects program. This year the program will support 10 seed projects covering an area no more than 40 sq. km. each. These projects are intended to... more
Sep 15, 2009
OpenTopography has released yet another round of GeoEarthScope LiDAR data for active faults in southern California. The most recent release includes the Elsinore fault, the Burro Flats segment of San Andreas fault, and the Crater Mountain portion of the Owens Valley, adding to the existing SoCal fault coverage that includes the Garlock, the San Andreas and San Jacinto and a number of faults in the Eastern California Shear Zone in the Mojave. At the Southern California Earthquake Center Annual Meeting in Palm Springs this week, I presented a poster that provides an update on the status of... more
Aug 28, 2009
There will be two sessions at the 2009 Fall American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting in San Francisco (December 14-18, 2009) specifically targeted at Earth science applications of LiDAR.
One session is focused on terrestrial LiDAR (TLS):
G17: Ground Based Geodetic Techniques and Science Applications
Conveners: Gerald W Bawden- US Geological Survey, Benjamin Brooks - University of Hawaii, David Phillips - UNAVCO
Ground-based geodesy is a rapidly expanding and evolving technology and because of their portability, relative ease of use, long acquisition ranges, and sub-cm spatial resolution... more