News
Jan 24, 2023
OpenTopography has recently added 3 new datasets over New Zealand that collectively cover over 28,000 km 2. The datasets cover the Canterbury region of the South Island, and the Taranaki and Northland regions of the North Island. These datasets are available through an ongoing collaboration between OpenTopography and LINZ that makes OpenTopography the primary distribution platform for point cloud data collected as part of the LINZ national elevation program.
Find the data here:
Northland, New Zealand 2018 - 2020
Canterbury, New Zealand 2020
Taranaki, New Zealand 2021 (updated with new data... more
Jan 10, 2023
Three new NCALM (National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping) datasets are now available from OpenTopography. Two of these datasets examine snow hydrology and dynamics in the western US. These include a dataset within the Sierra Nevada mountains near Truckee, California which was collected for Cara Piske at the University of Nevada, Reno to investigate forest-snow interactions in a high elevation critical zone. In addition, in March 2022, a dataset was collected east of Eugene, Oregon for Sarah Newcomb at Idaho State University. This dataset supports the investigation of the link between... more
Jan 5, 2023
OpenTopography is pleased to announce a feature in the latest issue of Lidar Magazine. Our article, "The Impact of Open Access Lidar Topography," highlights OpenTopography’s decade-long and successful open data hosting partnership with the state of Indiana. We also present the first ever lidar-based map of statewide topographic change.
OpenTopography facilitates user-friendly and open access to large volumes of topography data and derivative products like DEMs, hillshades, contours, and 3D visualization. These datasets are acquired using lidar, photogrammetry, and radar technologies. The... more
Dec 8, 2022
We're pleased to announce that NOAA's Coastal Lidar Data holdings are now available to academic users of OpenTopography. This new functionality enables access to over 800 new datasets, covering almost 1.4 million km2 (6.92 trillion points), with additional data to be added as they become available. The OpenTopography platform adds value to these NOAA data by improving access and providing processing capabilities for subsetting, gridding, visualization, and hydrologic terrain analysis. This addition of NOAA Coastal Lidar Data access from OpenTopography follows our 2020 integration of data from... more
Dec 5, 2022
Connect with OpenTopography at the 2022 American Geophysical Union meeting in Chicago, IL! OpenTopography will be in booth #1318 in the "NSF Neighborhood" in the exhibit hall. Our booth is staffed by the OpenTopography team and is a great chance to ask questions, provide feedback, or to discuss lidar, high resolution topography, and cyberinfrastructure.
Stop by the booth to see the latest in OpenTopography:
New raster visualization tools: The new raster visualization service will generate hillshade and color-relief maps, with user control over illumination angle and color palettes. In... more
Dec 1, 2022
OpenTopography is pleased to provide access to a unique Digital Terrain Model (DTM) for Continental Europe. Dr Tom Hengl at the OpenGeoHub foundation and his colleagues developed an Ensemble Machine Learning (EML) algorithm to predict the bare-earth terrain using publicly available Digital Surface Models (e.g. MERITDEM, AW3D30, GLO-30, EU DEM, GLAD canopy height). The EML was trained using over 9 million GEDI and ICESat-2 ground elevations. The resulting dataset provides a bare-earth terrain model of Continental Europe at 30 meter spatial resolution.
To access the data via OpenTopography:... more
Nov 21, 2022
OpenTopography invites you to join us for a series of weekly hour-long webinars beginning in March 2023. During the webinars, we will teach the basics of lidar, demonstrate how to use OpenTopography's growing set of on-demand processing tools, and present available resources and educational materials. The majority of the webinars will be a combination of a lecture on background material and a hands-on demonstration where participants will have the opportunity to use OpenTopography's tools to process and visualize topography data.
This webinar series should be of interest to students early in... more
Oct 24, 2022
OpenTopography and the WIFIRE Lab at UC San Diego have started work on a new collaborative effort to streamline access to approximately 60 federally funded California high resolution lidar datasets in both point cloud and raster formats. These datasets were collected by agencies such as the US Forest Service and have not been previously accessible online. OpenTopography will provide service based access to these datasets within WIFIRE’s BurnPro3D platform for more accurate wildfire fuel models analysis. As an added benefit to the OpenTopography community, these datasets will also become... more
Oct 19, 2022
A new lidar dataset covering approximately 1,724 km2 of northeastern Canterbury, New Zealand is now available on OpenTopography. The dataset was collected in response to the M7.8 November 13th 2016 Kaikōura earthquake to document ground rupture, landslides, damage to infrastructure, and for earthquake recovery. The collection was commissioned by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand on behalf of GNS Science, Environment Canterbury Regional Council, Marlborough District Council, Kaikoura District Council, Hurunui District Council, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, and the Earthquake... more
Oct 14, 2022
Two new Seed grant datasets from NCALM (National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping) are now available from OpenTopography. On July 13th 2021 a lidar dataset within the Sierra Nevada mountains in California was collected for Justin Higa at University of California, Los Angeles. This dataset was collected to help analyze topographic and lithologic controls on subsurface weathering in the Sierra Nevada mountains. In addition, between July 10-11 2021, a dataset was collected for Conor McMahon at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This dataset was collected to provide riparian... more
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