The first processed products from the GeoEarthScope Northern California LiDAR topography survey were released via the GEON Portal in the Fall of 2007. The Northern California survey acquired high resolution topography over approximately 1400 square kilometers of active faults in Northern California, as part of the NSF-funded EarthScope project.

The data are being released through the GEON portal as they are delivered by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM). Currently, the data are available as 0.5 m digital elevation models - both unfiltered (all data including vegetation) and filtered (bare earth) - as one square kilometer tiles in ESRI (ArcGIS) binary grid format. Users may browse and access the data via either a Google Maps interface in the GEON portal or via a Google Earth KML file that they download from the portal. At a later date, access to the full LiDAR point cloud will be possible for users who wish to produce their own custom digital elevation models.

Additional Northern California GeoEarthScope data are planned for release in the next few weeks, with more advanced access, visualization and analysis tools also under development. To access the GeoEarthScope LiDAR data, log into the GEON LiDAR application via http://portal.geongrid.org/lidar . Once in the portal, click on the “GeoEarthScope Northern California LiDAR Project (NoCAL)” link (in the left-hand menu). You may then proceed to download data via the Google Maps interface or to download the KML file for viewing in Google Earth.

Dogan Seber, Project Manager and Science Lead at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, has accepted a position with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission beginning February 2008. Dogan has relocated to Maryland, and will be missed here in San Diego. Everyone on the GEON team thanks him for his commitment to and efforts on GEON, and wishes him the best in this transition and his career with the NRC.

Chris Crosby, who has been a GEON team member while working as a graduate student with Prof. Ramon Arrowsmith, GEON PI at ASU, has expanded his role on the project. Chris will be the project lead and community liaison for the GEON LiDAR effort, and will also assist as science coordinator with the science and education user community. We are extremely fortunate, and very happy, to see Chris take on these roles in the project.

Several GEON PIs and team members attended and presented at the American Geophysics Union meeting, held December 10-14, in San Francisco. The project again hosted a booth in the Exhibit Hall at this meeting, where team members were on-hand throughout the week, talking with community members and providing demonstrations of some of the latest tools available via the GEON portal. This outreach is valuable, both from the project and the community perspectives, and we anticipate continuing to do so at future AGU meetings.