OT Blog
Information and discussion related to high-resolution lidar topography for the Earth sciences
Feb 5, 2018
We are pleased to announce an unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) theme session and short courses at the Geological Society of America Joint Section Cordilleran & Rocky Mountain Meeting in Flagstaff, AZ, May 14-17, 2018
TECHNICAL SESSION (abstract deadline Feb 20th, 2018):
T25. Geologic Applications of Unmanned Aerial Systems.
Cosponsored by GSA Geophysics Division; GSA Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division.
Conveners: Art Sylvester, Univ. of California Santa Barbara; Ramon Arrowsmith, Arizona State Univ.; Nicholas Barth, Univ. of California Riverside; Christopher... more
Jul 11, 2017
At the 2017 Geological Society of America Annual Meeting (in Seattle, WA, October 20-25, 2017), UNAVCO in collaboration with OpenTopography will be offering a pair of one-day introductory short courses on High Resolution Topography and 3D Imaging. The Friday course will focus on terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), while the Saturday course will cover structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry. Details on the courses are below and on the GSA Short Course and UNAVCO short course websites.
These courses typically fill to capacity, so register early if you are interested in participating.... more
Jan 8, 2017
OpenTopography had a great year in 2016, with continued strong growth in number of users and jobs run to access and process data. We've also continued to add data and successfully renewed OpenTopography funding from the US National Science Foundation. The infographic below summarizes various OpenTopography metrics from 2016 to illustrate use of the system in the past year.
Thanks for your support of OpenTopography. We're looking forward to another great year in 2017!
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Sep 15, 2016
Topographic rasters produced from OpenTopography's high-resolution point clouds can be used in tandem with TauDEM, an open source analysis toolkit by Dr. David Tarboton at Utah State University, to extract hydrologic information from topography. TauDEM can perform calculations such as flow direction and area contributing to a point within the hydrologic network. This capability has previously been demonstrated using Hydrology tools in Arc's Spatial Analyst toolbox (see this 2008 example) or using TauDEM's command line tools or Arc toolbox extension. However, hydrologic analysis on large, high... more
Jan 5, 2016
OpenTopography had a big year in 2015, and we continue to see exponential growth in number of users and jobs run to access and process data in 2015. We compiled metrics from the past year into this infographic to summarize OpenTopography use in 2015.
We look forward to another year of growth in users and available data in 2016!
OpenTopography 2015 in Review
Jul 14, 2015
As most OpenTopography users hopefully appreciate, primary support for OT comes from the U.S. National Science Foundation, and thus our primary emphasis is on facilitating access to topographic data oriented towards Earth science research. In the context of academic research, publications are perhaps the most important metric for measuring impact. As we prepare for a renewal proposal to the NSF for continued funding to support OpenTopography, we’ve endeavored to quantify how the open and easy access to high-resolution topography that OT offers has facilitated published research.
We... more
May 22, 2015
Structure from Motion (SfM) utilizes overlapping images to construct 3D models and is quickly gaining momentum as a low-cost and efficient technique to acquire high resolution topography. In this short video Ramon Arrowsmith (Arizona State University), part of the OpenTopography leadership team, provides an introduction to SfM.
Structure From Motion from Merri Lisa Trigilio on Vimeo.
Nov 26, 2014
Recently, an OpenTopography team member had an opportunity to assist NCALM with their Seed grants campaign in October 2014. She was awarded a NCALM student Seed grant in winter 2014 and the data collection occurred in Fall 2014. This year's campaign included areas of Idaho, Montana, Colorado, California and Utah. Emily had a chance to assist with her own data collection with the NCALM team members in collecting two Seed datasets in Owen's Valley and the southern San Joaquin Valley.
We met at the Epic Jet center in Bakersfield California on a clear, warm Thursday, October 22, 2014. The... more
Sep 29, 2014
This summer three San Diego high school students interned for OpenTopography as part of the Research Experience for High School Students (REHS) program at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UCSD. The students primarily worked on analysis of anonymized user behavior data as well as data usage patterns to identify relationships and trends in OpenTopography system use. A summary of their work was presented in a scientific poster session at SDSC (included below). Some of the students were also featured in a story on the local San Diego CBS news about the internship program.
The... more
Jul 30, 2014
Members of the OpenTopography team are co-convening a session at the fall 2014 American Geophysical Union Meeting in San Francisco:
AGU Session #3486: High-resolution topography for analyzing Earth-surface dynamics
Session description:
The surface of the Earth is a dynamic interface on which atmospheric, hydrologic, geomorphic, biotic, tectonic, and human processes interact. The prediction of water, sediment, and nutrient transfer, natural hazard mapping, radiation balance, and biophysical feedbacks that control landscape form and function have been previously limited by the coarse... more