Ground surface elevation from airborne laser (Arctic)

In plain English

What it measures. Ground surface elevation (height of the land) over Alaska and western Canada, measured point by point from the air.

How it's made. Produced from NASA's LVIS airborne laser altimeter flown on research aircraft during the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), turning raw laser returns into geolocated elevation measurements.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for mapping terrain and studying landscapes, vegetation, and ice across the far north.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION

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 2
Spatial extent-158, 48, -104, 72
FormatsASCII
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 surface elevation 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

ablvis2_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ABLVIS2",
    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.

What's measured

Coverage & cadence

What you can do with it

Get the data

Official links