OpenTopography update at AGU 2012

At the fall 2012 American Geophysical Union meeting, I represented OpenTopography at the New lidar technologies and vision for the future town hall along with our colleagues from the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping as well as Chris Crosby and the TLS program at UNAVCO.

Thanks to all who attended. It was a nice forum to talk about LiDAR as supported by the EAR program at the National Science Foundation (Thanks especially to Russ Kelz).

Here is my presentation which provides a very short update on OpenTopography and our renewal: pptx pdf. Here is an MP4 of my practice from the night before (not the greatest clarity but gets the point across: 13 Mb MP4)

Tours in Google Earth around Arizona highlight aspects of its geology

As a part of my final set of lectures for the 2012 Structural Geology class, I used my Camtasia to record some fly overs of Arizona from inside Google Earth.

In the first video (29 Mb MP4 format video file or on youtube), I tour from inside the Grand Canyon to around Flagstaff, Prescott and Jerome and finish over south Phoenix.

In the second video (29 Mb MP4 format video file or on youtube), I tour from the White Mountains of eastern Arizona over to Phoenix and on down to finish above Tucson.

These videos are not narrated, but they are then embedded in the narrated lecture on the Cordilleran geologic history (post Eocene) that I developed for the class (look around 20 minutes):
Tectonic history of the western North American Cordillera (from Eocene) ppt
video narration--big file (100MB)--may need to right click and save to local disk. Lecture narrated video on Youtube

videos

I hope these might be useful for others.

Structure from Motion mapping

I have been fascinated with high resolution imaging for a while. This post accumulates a few files and links to present some recent activities.

The main effort lately has been part of a collaboration with Sri Saripalli and Ed Nissen to use the tools of Structure from Motion to make high resolution digital elevation models and texture maps.

We have been using AgiSoft to make topographic models from our uncontrolled aerial photography.

Here is a powerpoint I presented at the 2012 SCEC meeting: ppt
Here is a poster from Ed Nissen presented at the 2012 AGU meeting: pdf

This video shows the result of a moderate resolution computation and then export of the texture map to KMZ:

Here is a direct link to the video in mp4 format: link

Dallas Rhodes and I played around with an AR Drone. It was pretty neat, but hard to fly as you can see in this video:

Here is a direct link to the video in mp4 format: link

Here are a couple of links that go along with our kit:
Balloon and kite photography systems
The Auto kite site in the research group of Professor Saripalli

L'Aquila forum in SESE

At the suggestion of J-F Smekens, we organized a forum to discuss the L'Aquila earthquakes and the prosecution of scientists whose "...reassuring statements [before the mainshock were] widely interpreted to be an anti-alarm" (T. Jordan). The discussion was animated! Thanks to all who joined!

Here is the powerpoint with the discussion materials: pdf pptx

Here is information about the Motivazione from the judge justifiying his decision: link

Here is a link from our INGV colleagues accumulating many relevant documents: http://processoaquila.wordpress.com/.

Fall classes and seminars at ASU

Sorry to be so quiet dear readers (if there are any left of you!). So much to do and so little time to write.

Anyway, here are a couple of links to things teaching-wise that are going on this fall:

• GLG310 Structural Geology (http://arrowsmith310.asu.edu). I am teaching this class for the first time since 2004. It is a good class to teach and we have 44 students!
• Active faulting reading group (http://activetectonics.asu.edu/ActiveFaultingFall2012.html). We are going to do a seminar this fall on various aspects of active faulting and read some papers.
• Surface processes seminar (linked from http://geomorphology.sese.asu.edu/ once we get going). This fall's topic is going to be the Cordillera (including some long-wavelength topics).

How the Earth Was Made - S01E01 San Andreas Fault (Documentary)

This is a cool San Andreas Fault documentary: http://watchdocumentary.com/watch/how-the-earth-was-made-s01e01-san-andreas-fault-video_202fae216.html. Lots of fun commentary by Ken Hudnut and others as well as nice footage along the San Andreas Fault especially in the Carrizo Plain.