News
Aug 4, 2021
OpenTopography is pleased to announce the release of a new lidar dataset covering 1989 square kilometers of Northwest region of the Bay of Plenty on the North Island of New Zealand. The dataset, "Bay of Plenty Northwest, New Zealand 2020-2021" has an average point spacing of 7.6 pts/m2, and was funded by BOPLASS Limited, with data management by Toitu Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand. This dataset is available through on ongoing collaboration between OpenTopography and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), that makes OpenTopography the primary distribution platform for point cloud data... more
Jul 26, 2021
OpenTopography is pleased to announce the release of a new lidar dataset covering all 8,756 square kilometers of the Gisborne District on the North Island of New Zealand. The dataset, "Gisborne, New Zealand 2018-2020" has an average point spacing of over 10 pts/m2, and was funded by Gisborne District Council, with data management by Toitu Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand. This dataset is available through on ongoing collaboration between OpenTopography and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), that makes OpenTopography the primary distribution platform for point cloud data collected as... more
May 21, 2021
ALOS World 3D - 30m (AW3D30) is a freely available, downsampled version of a high-resolution (5m) dataset collected by The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The ALOS World 3D - 30m dataset is a digital surface model derived from satellite-based stereo-photogrammetry. OpenTopography has updated its version of AW3D30 from version 1 (May 2015) to version 3.2 (January 2021). This new version is a vast improvement as it fills the null values in the older version with existing DEMs (see Table 1 in the documentation for details), and includes improved algorithms and processing techniques to... more
May 20, 2021
OpenTopography has expanded our collection of global datasets to include the NASADEM, as well as the European Space Agency (ESA) Copernicus Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). This adds to OpenTopography's existing global datasets: NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) DEM, STRM15+, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) DEM. This broad array of DEMs provides global coverage using data derived from different space-based sensors. The OpenTopography portal provides easy GUI-based access, as well as a suite of processing and analysis tools... more
May 18, 2021
OpenTopography is pleased to announce our new open-access publication in Geosphere about our on-demand differencing tools: "Measuring change at Earth’s surface: On-demand vertical and three- dimensional topographic differencing implemented in OpenTopography."
Vertical differencing measures change from a variety of processes including urban growth, vegetation change, river erosion, volcanic eruptions, and coastal processes and is the subtraction of raster-based elevations. 3D differencing resolves the displacement from earthquakes and slow-moving landslides by measuring the rigid deformation... more
Apr 19, 2021
OpenTopography is pleased to announce the release of a new lidar dataset covering approximately 74 km2 covering the Illilouette Creek basin in Yosemite National Park, California. This dataset was collected for Dr. Sally Thompson at the University of California, Berkeley in order to assess the occurrence and characteristics of post-fire erosion gullies caused by the Empire Fire in the Illilouette Creek basin. Data were collected by NCALM, an NSF-funded center that supports the use of airborne laser mapping technology (a.k.a. lidar) in the scientific community and is jointly operated by the... more
Feb 1, 2021
OpenTopography is seeking to hire a summer intern through the UNAVCO Student Internship Program (USIP)!
The OpenTopography Data Technician intern will support data operations, including workflows related to the ingestion of new topographic datasets into the OT system. Tasks will include data and metadata QA/QC, data loading, website landing page development, metadata enhancements, and potentially development of new tools or services for topographic data. The intern will learn about the OpenTopography cyberinfrastructure system and will work closely with both the OT team at UNAVCO as well as... more
Jan 26, 2021
OpenTopography is pleased to announce the release of the SRTM15+ V2.1 global bathymetry and topography dataset. This dataset is the latest iteration of the SRTM+ digital elevation model (DEM) where the "plus" indicates the addition of ocean bathymetry from shipboard soundings and satellite-derived predicted depths. This DEM is a global elevation grid with a spatial sampling interval of 15 arc seconds (approximately 500 x 500 m pixel size at the equator). New data consists of >33.6 million multibeam and singlebeam measurements collated by several institutions.
For more information on this... more
Jan 19, 2021
OpenTopography is happy to announce the release of an on-demand canopy height model tool. Canopy height models are a measurement of the height of trees, buildings, and other structures above the ground topography. This product is used in a variety of forestry applications including tracking vegetation and trees in a forest over time, calculating biomass, and estimating leaf area index.
A canopy height model is calculated by subtracting the digital terrain model (DTM) from the digital surface model (DSM). A DTM refers to the bare earth, and a DSM measures the elevation of the top of a... more
Dec 17, 2020
OpenTopography invites you to join us for a one hour live webinar on Monday January 11 at 2-3 EST/11-12 PST on topographic differencing. Learn about vertical and 3D topographic differencing and perform differencing on OpenTopography's web interface with one of 60 datasets pairs with differencing enabled.
Over the past two years, OpenTopography has released several on-demand differencing tools for performing change detection of multitemporal datasets. With these tools, users can measure landscape change from natural and anthropogenic processes including urban growth, vegetation change, river... more
Pages
