Center Ph.D. Students Engage Global Audience with GRASS GIS and Tangible Landscape Workshop
Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. student Pratikshya Regmi.
In May, and Caitlin Haedrich and I had the opportunity to attend and present at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS) at the University of Colorado Boulder. As Ph.D. students at NC State’s Center for Geospatial Analytics, we led a hands-on clinic introducing participants to GRASS, an open-source geospatial processing engine, and Tangible Landscape, an interactive system that turns terrain modeling into something you can see, touch, and reshape in real time.
Our session welcomed a diverse group from across the earth sciences fields and with a variety of GRASS experience – from first-time users to long-time open-source enthusiasts – all eager to explore how geospatial tools can help us understand and interact with Earth’s surface. We began with an overview of GRASS, followed by step-by-step Python-based workflows for simulating hydrology, overland flow, and flood mapping. These examples showed how geospatial data can be transformed into powerful insights using approachable, replicable methods.
One of the most exciting aspects of the workshop was the opportunity to showcase Tangible Landscape. This hands-on, interactive tool transforms complex geospatial modeling into something tangible and visually accessible. Developed at the Center for Geospatial Analytics by Anna Petrasova and her team, Tangible Landscape combines a sandbox with powerful open-source software (GRASS GIS). As you sculpt terrain – carving out hills, valleys, or channels – a Kinect scanner captures the shape, and a projector instantly displays how things like water would flow across the surface. But it’s not just about water – it can also simulate erosion, land use change, trail planning, and more.
This was our second (me) and third time (Caitlin) attending CSDMS, and we were first introduced to this amazing community through the ESPIn program. We hoped that Tangible Landscape would resonate with this group, especially since everyone here works on earth surface processes and is deeply involved in modeling. Watching people light up as they shaped the landscape and saw real-time feedback confirmed just how powerful – and fun – this tool can be for both research and outreach.
What made the clinic especially rewarding was the spirit of community it fostered. Conversations extended well beyond the workshop itself, creating opportunities to connect, share, and collaborate across disciplines and experience levels. Whether someone was learning about GRASS for the first time or building on years of experience, everyone contributed to the vibrant exchange of ideas.
The CSDMS meeting reminded us of the importance of making geospatial science both accessible and engaging. Tools like GRASS and Tangible Landscape make it easier to connect with complex environmental data, not just through numbers and maps, but through interactive, visual, and physical exploration. All the workshop materials, including the example workflows, are available on GitHub. We’re excited to continue sharing, learning, and building with the GRASS community.
