New Point Cloud Data from California, Colorado, Washington and Wyoming

OpenTopography recently released five new point cloud datasets collected over areas of Owens Valley (CA), the Colorado Rockies, Mt. Rainier National Park (WA) and Yellowstone National Park (WY). These datasets were collected in 2010 and 2012 by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM). NCALM is a 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 Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Cullen College of Engineering, University of Houston and the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley. Four of the five datasets were collected under NCALM's graduate student seed proposal program that awards ten projects per year to graduate student PIs who need lidar data for their research. Each collection is typically limited to no more than 40 square kilometers. The release of these data via OpenTopography is the product of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between OpenTopography and NCALM to make OT the primary distribution pathway for NCALM data.

NCALM Datasets

• Solfatara Plateau Obsidian Lava Flow, Yellowstone National Park, WY
• Hyak, WA: Cedar River Municipal Watershed Snow Modeling
• Southwest Flank of Mt.Rainier, WA
• Raleigh Peak, Colorado: May 2010
• White Mountain Fault Zone, Owens Valley, CA

Oblique view from northwest showing the White Mountain Fault Zone, Owens Valley, CA with bare earth hillshade and Google Earth imagery. The hillshade image highlights geomorphic features from interactions between the steep mountain drainage (coming out of top left) and normal faulting.