OT Blog
Information and discussion related to high-resolution lidar topography for the Earth sciences
Apr 1, 2010
I just stumbled upon this LiDAR 101 video, produced by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at University of Georgia, while Googling for something else. In ~13 minutes, it does a nice job of summarizing LiDAR technology, data products, the costs associated with acquiring data, and various applications. It is worth a watch if you are looking for a quick crash-course in LiDAR or need a video to show in the classroom:
Are there other good introduction to LiDAR videos out there? Leave a comment if you are aware of others.
Mar 12, 2010
Note that due to the large number of applicants, the deadline for applying to the "New Tools in Process-Based Analysis of Lidar Topographic Data" workshop has been moved up to 9 AM EST on Monday, March 15:
Dear Colleagues,
On March 7th, we announced an upcoming workshop titled
"New Tools in Process-Based Analysis of Lidar Topographic Data,"
to be held June 1-2 in Boulder, CO.
Since then we received a very large number of applications (more than three
times the number of available spaces in the workshop), and must close the
application process prior to the previously listed... more
Mar 8, 2010
Please see the following announcement for an upcoming NSF-sponsored workshop on “New Tools in Process-Based Analysis of Lidar Topographic Data,” to be held June 1-2 at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. The goal of the workshop is to "provide researchers in Earth surface processes with an opportunity to gain hands-on knowledge in new methods for analyzing high-resolution topographic data. Participants should have active research projects using lidar data (airborne or ground-based). Graduate students, faculty and other researchers are encouraged... more
Mar 7, 2010
I received the following announcement from Barb Tewksbury at Hamilton about an upcoming series of On the Cutting Edge workshops that they are hosting on the topics of Teaching Geoscience Using GIS and Remote Sensing and Teaching Geoscience in the Field in the 21st Century. Certainly the GIS and remote sensing course is very applicable to many users of OpenTopography, and combined with the field course should be an excellent week in Bozeman, MT. Note that the application deadline is March 20, 2010. All the details:
On the Cutting Edge will offer two back-to-back workshops at Montana State... more
Feb 26, 2010
Max Wilkinson, a PhD student in the Dept. of Earth Sciences at Durham University in the UK, recently sent us a link to a video of a seminar he gave on methods of vegetation filtration from Terrestiral Laser Scanning (TLS) data using the Points2Grid tool developed by the OpenTopography team (originally developed with GEON funding). Points2Grid is a Windows application that implements the exact same DEM generation algorithm that is used in the OpenTopography point cloud processing system. It was developed to allow users to get the same DEM generation capabilities as are available in... more
Feb 23, 2010
Earlier this month, I had the privilege of participating in the National Science Foundation TeraGrid Workshop on Cyber-GIS in Washington, DC. The workshop was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) TeraGrid Science Gateway program and the Office of Cyberinfrastructure with the goal of "underpin fundamental issues of Cyber-GIS for enhancing cyberinfrastructure while advancing the next-generation GIS with synergistic high-performance, distributed, and collaborative capabilities."
Each participant in the workshop was required to submit a position paper that highlighted an issue or... more
Feb 12, 2010
As discussed in previous blog posts (here and here), LiDAR data have been collected over parts of Haiti following the January 12th earthquake. The data collected by the Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Kucera International, and ImageCat, Inc., has recently become available via an FTP site maintained by the USGS that is hosting geospatial data acquired in response to the Haiti earthquake. These data were collected during a campaign between January 21st and the 27th.
In order to make these data easier for all users to access, I downloaded and processed... more
Feb 10, 2010
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... more
Feb 10, 2010
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... more
Jan 27, 2010
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 "... more