Computational and methodological aspects of terrestrial surface analysis based on point clouds

► We present a software toolkit for processing terrestrial point clouds. ► The toolkit can be applied to TLS surveys of gravel river beds. ► Improved DEM differencing is one outcome. ► Estimating surface roughness and grain size distribution is possible now with point-based, statistical metrics. ► Other applications and extensions are enabled by the library being freely available and open source.