OT Blog

Information and discussion related to high-resolution lidar topography for the Earth sciences

Programmatic Access to OpenTopography's Point Cloud Data with Tile Indexes

OpenTopography hosts hundreds of high-resolution point cloud datasets covering more than 500,000 km² globally. While our web-based data portal provides intuitive point-and-click access to these data, researchers increasingly need programmatic methods to build automated, reproducible workflows. We're excited to share a new Jupyter notebook tutorial that demonstrates how to efficiently access OpenTopography's point cloud data using tile indexes and cloud-native streaming techniques.

OT Bibliography 2024: Review of publications using OpenTopography

Primary support for OpenTopography comes from the Division of Earth Sciences at the U.S. National Science Foundation, and thus, our principal emphasis is on facilitating access to topographic data oriented towards Earth science research and education. In the context of academic research, publications are a crucial metric for measuring impact and sustaining support for initiatives such as OpenTopography.

Since its initiation, OpenTopography data and resources have enabled:

Exploring Topographic Change with 3D Prints

By Emily Zawacki

3D prints of landscapes provide a three-dimensional tactile way to explore the Earth’s surface and learn about the geologic processes that shape it. We can use topography data and create 3D prints of landscapes from digital elevation models. With 3D printing technologies, there is the potential for exploring areas of topographic change in a three-dimensional tactile way by creating 3D prints from pre- and post-event topography.

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