The GeoEarthScope Northern California LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) project acquired high resolution topography data starting in spring 2007, along major active geologic faults in the western United States as part of the EarthScope Facility project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Between this project and the previously conducted B4 project in Southern California, also funded by NSF, the entire San Andreas fault system and associated geologic features have now been mapped with high-resolution airborne LiDAR. This was the first in a series of large-scale GeoEarthScope LiDAR acquisition projects.

Earlier this year, extensive high-resolution LiDAR data for active faults in southern and eastern California and the Pacific Northwest were acquired. Features included in this acquisition include the Garlock and Elsinore faults in California and the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt in Washington.

These data are currently being processed and will be available this fall via the GEON portal, based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center on the UC San Diego campus. The final GeoEarthScope LiDAR field campaign is in progress this month, with the goal of acquiring data for features in Yellowstone National Park, the Tetons, the Wasatch Front and Alaska.

"Providing online access to large scientific data sets, along with rich data processing, analysis, and visualization services, is the direction for the future, as much of science becomes data intensive in nature and dominated by the need for high-performance data processing," said Chaitan Baru, principal investigator for the GEON.

"The GeoEarthScope LiDAR data provide an unprecedented representation of the topography along many active faults in the western United States and will be a phenomenal resource for researchers studying earthquake hazards, faulting, and tectonics in that region," said Christopher Crosby, manager of the GEON LiDAR project at SDSC.

"The GEON LiDAR system utilizes cyberinfrastructure capabilities developed at SDSC to provide internet-based access and processing of these massive and computationally challenging datasets to a large and diverse scientific user community."

GeoEarthScope, a component of the NSF-funded EarthScope project, includes the acquisition of aerial and satellite imagery and geochronology. It is managed by UNAVCO, a non-profit, membership-governed consortium that supports Earth science by advancing high-precision techniques for the measurement and understanding of crustal deformation. GeoEarthScope is conducted in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

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