A new lidar dataset covering approximately 63 km2 of the Eastern Cascade Mountains in Washington State is now available on OpenTopography. The study area is located northwest of Ellensburg, WA. This lidar dataset was collected as part of a National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) seed grant for Cassie Lumbrazo at the University of Washington to evaluate the hydrologic effects of forest restoration.
On account of the winter holiday break and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at University of California, San Diego closure, OpenTopography will be operating with reduced support between December 23rd and January 2nd. OpenTopography systems will be fully available and users may run jobs as normal. However responses to emails, system outages, and bug reports may be delayed. If you have questions or concerns please email info@opentopography.org and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
OpenTopography will be hiring at least one Data Science intern this summer via the UNAVCO Summer Internship Program (USIP). The intern(s) will work with the OpenTopography team to develop workflows and services related to processing, analysis, and/or visualization of topographic data managed by OpenTopography (https://opentopography.org/). These include lidar, photogrammetry, and radar data in point cloud and raster formats.
We want to highlight science, art, and other uses of OpenTopography data and services. We plan to publish short summaries contributed by our user-community that show a variety of use cases for topography datasets in academic, commercial, and hobby applications. Submissions can include—but are not limited to—published or unpublished science results, an image of a topography dataset, art work, a 3D print, an example of community outreach, or a commercial use case. The submissions must have used at least one dataset that is available on OpenTopography.
A new lidar dataset covering 84 km2 along the coast of Lake Michigan east of Milwaukee, Wisconsin is now available on OpenTopography. This lidar dataset was collected as part of a National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) seed grant for Collin Roland at the University of Wisconsin and includes bathymetry. This study used airborne lidar to assess Lake Michigan coastal erosion by measuring the geomorphic response to extremely high lake levels.
A couple weeks ago OpenTopography co-founder and co-PI Christopher Crosby was invited onto the MapScaping Podcast to talk about the history and future of OpenTopography, and building and maintaining infrastructure for open topographic data. A huge thanks to Daniel O'Donohue for the invitation and for guiding an interesting conversation.
A new lidar dataset covering approximately 62 km2 within Tahoe National Forest near Truckee, California is now available on OpenTopography. This lidar dataset was collected as part of a National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) Seed grant for Louis Graup at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This study used airborne lidar to study how to preserve mountains as "water towers" through forest management.
OpenTopography is happy to extend access to USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) data (point clouds and 1m raster data) via our portal to international academics, K-12 teachers, and informal educators via a formal application process described here. Successful applicants will be able to seamlessly discover, download, and process the 3DEP dataset via the standard OpenTopography interface.
