Forest and ground elevation from aircraft laser (Africa)

In plain English

What it measures. Surface and ground elevation over Gabon in central Africa, including the height of forests and terrain, measured by a scanning laser.

How it's made. Collected by NASA's airborne LVIS laser altimeter flown on aircraft during the AfriSAR campaign with the European Space Agency.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists study forest height and structure, useful for estimating how much carbon tropical forests hold.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

Time span2016-02-20 → 2016-03-08
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 extent8, -2, 12, 1
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 Gabon, Africa. The measurements were taken by the NASA Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS), an airborne lidar scanning laser altimeter. The data were collected as part of a NASA campaign, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) mission AfriSAR.

Get the data

aflvis2_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AFLVIS2",
    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