Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/ABLVIS1B
ABLVIS1B·v1·dataset

Raw airborne laser return signals over Arctic land

ABoVE LVIS L1B Geolocated Return Energy Waveforms V001
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 1B HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. The full raw return signals (waveforms) bounced back to an airborne laser as it scanned the ground over Alaska and western Canada, capturing the shape of surfaces and vegetation.

How it's made. Recorded by NASA's LVIS airborne laser altimeter flown on research aircraft during the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), at an early geolocated-but-unprocessed stage.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level building block; most people use the elevation and vegetation-structure products derived from these waveforms rather than the raw signals themselves.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › SENSOR COUNTS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2017-06-29 → 2017-07-17
  • Measured byAIRCRAFT (ALTIMETERS, LASERS) · B-200 (LVIS) · C-130 (LVIS) · DC-8 (LVIS) · G-V (LVIS) · HU-25C (LVIS) · P-3B (LVIS) · RQ-4 (LVIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-158, 48, -104, 72
  • FormatsHDF5
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This data set contains return energy waveform data over Alaska and Western Canada measured by the NASA Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS), an airborne lidar scanning laser altimeter. The data were collected as part of NASA's Terrestrial Ecology Program campaign, the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE).

Get the data

ablvis1b_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ABLVIS1B",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from NSIDC_CPRD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.