Airborne laser surface heights (IceBridge, v1) — ILVIS2

In plain English

What it measures. The height of ice, snow and land surfaces over Greenland, Alaska and Antarctica, measured point by point along aircraft flight lines.

How it's made. Collected by a laser instrument (a scanning lidar altimeter) flown on aircraft during NASA's Operation IceBridge campaigns, then processed into geolocated surface elevations.

How & where you'd use it. Used to study how ice sheets and glaciers are changing height over time, helping connect older and newer satellite ice records.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

Time span2009-04-14 → 2015-10-31
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-180, -90, 180, -53
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 Greenland, Alaska, and Antarctica, measured by the NASA Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS), an airborne lidar scanning laser altimeter. The data were collected as part of NASA Operation IceBridge funded campaigns.

Get the data

ilvis2_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ILVIS2",
    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