Bare-ground elevation from aircraft laser (3 m) — ASO_3M_PCDTM

In plain English

What it measures. The elevation of the bare ground (with trees excluded) across survey areas, gridded at 3-meter detail.

How it's made. Built from airborne laser (lidar) measurements collected by the NASA/JPL Airborne Snow Observatory flying small aircraft during snow-free conditions.

How & where you'd use it. Serves as the baseline 'ground level' map used to calculate snow depth in the Airborne Snow Observatory's snow products, so it's mainly a reference layer for snow measurement.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

Time span2014-08-23 → 2019-10-10
Measured byDHC-6 (Riegl LMS-Q1560) · King Air (Riegl LMS-Q1560)
Processing levelLevel 4
Spatial extent-119.15263, 38.34703, -119.14655, 38.35197
FormatsGeoTIFF
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 provides 3 m gridded, bare-earth elevations (excluding trees) that are used as the baseline for the Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) snow-on products. The data were collected during snow-free conditions as part of the NASA/JPL ASO aircraft survey campaigns.

Get the data

aso_3m_pcdtm_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ASO_3M_PCDTM",
    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.

Official links

Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
ASO L4 Lidar Point Cloud Digital Terrain Model 3m UTM Grid, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
ASO Basins and Geographical Extents VIEW RELATED INFORMATION