Curriculum for Educators

For educators, OpenTopography provides curriculum modules that include lesson outlines, sample datasets, and student activities to integrate topographic data into the classroom.

High Resolution Topography in the Classroom

Indiana White River Meanders Mapping Exercise
In this exercise for undergraduates, students use hillshade images derived from airborne lidar from a section of the White River in Indiana to map how the river has changed over the span of five years. Students learn to identify and describe how river meanders and oxbow lakes evolve. They also evaluate the longer-term evolution of the river's form and assess how local infrastructure may be impacted.

Topographic differencing: Earthquake along the Wasatch fault
Undergraduate-oriented exercise where students pretend that they are geologists working for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and must respond to a recent earthquake along the Wasatch Fault. They aid in the response by mapping the surface rupture and calculating the surface displacement, coseismic slip, and earthquake magnitude from high resolution lidar topographic imagery acquired before and after the earthquake.

A Structural Geology Exercise for Remotely Examining Folds at Painted Canyon Near the San Andreas Fault
In this activity designed for a structural geology class, students use CloudCompare to make orientation measurements of a fold near the San Andreas Fault.

OpenLandform Catalog
The OpenTopography OpenLandform Catalog serves as a resource to explore geologic landforms in high resolution topography for teachers, students, or any interested user. The catalog includes a list of geologic landforms sourced from data hosted by OpenTopography separated into categories based on formative processes, along with a brief description of the landform, a link to the dataset page, and pre-generated data products.

image imageimage image
(left to right) White Sands New Mexico hillsahde image, DEM image, and Garlock Fault hillshade image, DEM image.

Geologic Mapping with High Resolution Topography in ArcGIS Pro
This suite of video tutorials demonstrates how to use ArcGIS Pro software and high resolution topography to construct geologic maps from start to finish. An example dataset is provided, so viewers can follow along step-by-step.

Jupyter Notebooks
OpenTopography has several Jupyter Notebooks available that use OpenTopography data and processing resources, and are excellent for integration in classroom settings. Current notebooks include an overview of the Rayshader Library to produce 2D and 3D data visualizations and maps, subsampling lidar point clouds for STL output, and programmatic access to Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) global datasets.

Community Resources

This table features more hands on resources and tools for applying lidar data to teach Earth science. Resources were sourced from OpenTopography short courses as well as the Earth science education community. If you have a lab or exercise associated with lidar or OpenTopography, please email us at info@opentopography.org if you'd like it included in this list.


Title & Link
Topics & Content
Level
Geology of Yosemite Valley

Developed by Dr. Nicolas Barth, part of SERC's Teaching with Online Field Experiences Exemplary Collection
  • Geology of Yosemite Valley Virtual Field Trip
  • El Capitan Geologic Map Cross-Cutting Relationship exercise
  • Geomorphic Mapping of Yosemite Valley exercise
 High school - undergraduate (different parts for high school through upper-division undergraduate)
Identifying faulting styles, rates and histories through analysis of geomorphic characteristics (Lidar)

Part of GETSI module on Imaging Active Tectonics with InSAR and Lidar
  • Students determine the most reliable geomorphic features to identify active faults
  • Compare using different image types (lidar images vs. Google Earth satellite images)
  • Learn that images represent a form of time series
 Upper-level undergraduate
Analyzing High Resolution Topography with TLS and SfM

Part of the GETSI Field Collection
  • Materials guide students through designing surveys using TLS and SfM
  • Units on four geoscience applications of high resolution topographic analysis
 Upper-level undergraduate
Recognizing and mapping faults using lidar and field data

Developed by Dr. Anne Egger, part of SERC's On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Collection		 Undergraduate
Wallace Creek Field Trip Student Guide

From OpenTopography Short Course
  • Measure offset channels by San Andreas fault using hillshade imagery in Google Earth.
  • Plate motion by GPS velocities.
  • This exercise is paired with Wallace Creek Virtual Field Trip.
 Undergraduate
Extracting Information from DEMs in ArcMap

From OpenTopography Short Course
  • Sample activities for extracting information from DEMs in ArcMap.
  • Point and profile queries as well as raster math.
 Undergraduate

Related Resources from SERC

Title & Link
Content
Source
How do I use GIS in Introductory Geoscience?
  • Methods to Use GIS at the introductory Level.
  • Bypassing perceived barriers to using GIS at the introductory level.
 SERC
Investigating Earthquakes: GIS Mapping and Analysis
  • General tips on how to adapt a chapter of the Earth Exploration Toolbook to a college-level geoscience course.
  • Skills taught: access and download online data, format the data so it can be uploaded into GIS software, and preparing maps.
 SERC
Teaching with Google Earth
  • A complete guide to Using Google Earth in the geoscience classroom.
  • Complements Google Earth data, custom data and the OpenLandform Catalog available on OpenTopography.
 SERC