2026-11-04 –, Carr
This talk offers a broad, tour of where the GRASS project stands and a look into where the project is heading.
Over the past year GRASS has had a major release, adopted a new visual identity, and continued to grow its contributor community. This talk gives attendees a broad picture of what has changed and where the project is heading.
The core of the talk is GRASS 8.5, the result of two years of work. It introduces a modern Python API (grass.tools) that exposes GRASS tools as Python functions with NumPy and JSON support, making GRASS easier to use in notebooks and data-science workflows. Dozens of tools now produce JSON output through a common format option, tools built with OpenMP run multithreaded by default, and GRASS can now be installed with conda on all major platforms. The documentation has been rewritten to show every tool three ways: command line, grass.tools, and grass.script.
The talk also covers how the project has evolved beyond the code: the rebrand from "GRASS GIS" to "GRASS," becoming a NumFOCUS fiscally sponsored project, new funding and grants, and new tools and addons spanning cloud-native data access (STAC), machine learning, hydrology, and terrain analysis.
It closes with where GRASS is heading, including the Python API transition, the move to CMake, and the GRASS Community Meeting in San Michele all'Adige, Italy, in July 2026, along with how new contributors can get involved.
Corey White is a Geospatial Research Software Engineer at the Center for Geospatial Analytics at North Carolina State University and the founder and CEO of OpenPlains Inc. He is a core contributor to GRASS, where he develops and maintains tools and addons spanning terrain, hydrologic, and time-series analysis. His research centers on terrain analysis, hydrologic modeling, and topographic change detection, including multi-temporal change detection across the Blue Ridge Escarpment following Hurricane Helene, the body of work that motivates this workshop. He teaches graduate courses in geospatial modeling and UAS mapping at NC State and regularly leads open-source geospatial training for research and professional audiences.