OpenTopography

01/10/2025

Coastlines in Crisis

Coastal areas like the Outer Banks of North Carolina are shrinking. What can we learn and see from lidar data?


This video is part of a new series from OpenTopography aimed at expanding community engagement. The series explores what we can learn about Earth’s surface, geologic processes, and natural hazards from remote sensing data like lidar.

01/10/2025

18/08/2025

Dunes in a Wetland? The Potholes Reservoir Explained

The Potholes Reservoir in Washington state has a unique juxtaposition of desert dunes next a wetland. How did this come to be?

19/05/2025

OT team member Cassandra Brigham presenting on topographic differencing and error analysis during yesterday’s “Introduction to OpenTopography Tools for Calculating Change at the Earth’s Surface“ short course at the 2025 EarthScope Consortium GAGE/SAGE Science Workshop.

13/03/2025

New video answers the question “What is OpenTopography?”

26/02/2025

Join us for a FREE OpenTopography Spring Webinar series. Four weekly hour-long webinars starting March 5th. Registration and more information: https://opentopography.org/news/2025-webinar-series

13/02/2025

Using to understand the impacts of the 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires, Los Angeles, CA. We processed pre- and post-fire lidar data to illustrate the changes to the natural and built environments caused by these devastating fires:

https://opentopography.org/blog/using-lidar-understand-impacts-2025-palisades-and-eaton-fires-los-angeles-ca

15/01/2025

In response to the devastating wildfires in S. California, OpenTopography is temporarily opening our services applied to USGS 3DEP & NOAA Coastal datasets covering Los Angeles County. 42 pre-wildfire point cloud datasets as well as 1m DEMs are available to aid response efforts: https://opentopography.org/news/2025_LA_fire_response

15/01/2025

11/12/2024

OT is at next week. Visit us in booth #1108 in the exhibit hall. Our booth is staffed by the OT team. Stop by & ask questions, provide feedback, and see what’s new in OT. We’ll also have “I ❤️ ” stickers!

https://opentopography.org/news/opentopography-2024-agu-meeting

01/11/2024

OpenTopography is at the National Diversity in STEM ( ) conference in Phoenix, AZ this week. Stop by our booth in the exhibit hall (shared w/ the AGeS Geochronology Project) to say hi 👋, ask questions, and learn about available resources related to , topography, education & training, and internships.

04/09/2024

Happy to announce that National Science Foundation (NSF) support for OpenTopography has been renewed for another four years! This is the 5th generation of funding for OpenTopography. Support comes from NSF EAR's Geoinformatics program & the National Discovery Cloud for Climate initiative. Learn more: https://opentopography.org/news/opentopography-receives-funding-renewal-national-science-foundation

Image: The 2017 Mud Creek landslide occurred along the Big Sur coastline of central California, approximately 140 kilometers south of San Francisco. The red areas indicate zones of erosion or material loss, while blue areas highlight where the displaced material was deposited. Map of topographic change computed from overlapping lidar datasets with OpenTopography.