For educators, OpenTopography provides curriculum modules that include lesson outlines, sample datasets, and student activities to integrate topographic data into the classroom.
Indiana White River Meanders Mapping Exercise
In this exercise for undergraduates, students use hillshade images derived from airborne lidar from a section of the White River in Indiana to map how the river has changed over the span of five years. Students learn to identify and describe how river meanders and oxbow lakes evolve. They also evaluate the longer-term evolution of the river's form and assess how local infrastructure may be impacted.
Topographic differencing: Earthquake along the Wasatch fault
Undergraduate-oriented exercise where students pretend that they are geologists working for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and must respond to a recent earthquake along the Wasatch Fault. They aid in the response by mapping the surface rupture and calculating the surface displacement, coseismic slip, and earthquake magnitude from high resolution lidar topographic imagery acquired before and after the earthquake.
A Structural Geology Exercise for Remotely Examining Folds at Painted Canyon Near the San Andreas Fault
In this activity designed for a structural geology class, students use CloudCompare to make orientation measurements of a fold near the San Andreas Fault.
OpenLandform Catalog
The OpenTopography OpenLandform Catalog serves as a resource to explore geologic landforms in high resolution topography for teachers, students, or any interested user. The catalog includes a list of geologic landforms sourced from data hosted by OpenTopography separated into categories based on formative processes, along with a brief description of the landform, a link to the dataset page, and pre-generated data products.
This table features more hands on resources and tools for applying lidar data to teach Earth science. Resources were sourced from OpenTopography short courses as well as the Earth science education community. If you have a lab or exercise associated with lidar or OpenTopography, please email us at info@opentopography.org if you'd like it included in this list.
Wallace Creek Field Trip Student Guide |
|
OpenTopography Short Course | Undergraduate |
Advanced GIS: Building DEMs with Airborne LiDAR |
|
Dr. Joe Wheaton, Utah State University | Undergraduate - Graduate |
Making a Geologic Map with ArcGIS |
|
GSA Short Course, Dr. Mike Oskin, UC Davis | Undergraduate |
Slip Rates and Uncertainty at Wallace Creek Wallace Creek Sample data (.zip) |
|
GSA Short Course, Dr. Mike Oskin, UC Davis | Undergraduate - graduate |
LaDiCaoz Tutorial LaDiCaoz Software (Dropbox) |
|
Dr. Olaf Zielke, Arizona State University, OpenTopography Short Course | Undergraduate - Graduate |
Extracting Information from DEMs in ArcMap |
|
OpenTopography Short Course | Undergraduate |
Measuring Earthquake-Generated Surface Offsets from High-Resolution Digital Topography |
|
David Haddad, Arizona State University | Undergraduate - Graduate |
Recognizing and mapping faults using lidar and field data |
|
SERC | Undergraduate |
Related Resources from SERC
Title & Link | ||
---|---|---|
How do I use GIS in Introductory Geoscience? |
|
SERC |
Investigating Earthquakes: GIS Mapping and Analysis |
|
SERC |
Teaching with Google Earth |
|
SERC |