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Full catalog/LVISC1B
LVISC1B·v1·dataset

Raw laser pulses bounced off the ground (LVIS Classic)

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

What it measures. The raw, geolocated laser pulses an airborne instrument sent toward the ground and the energy that came back — essentially the full record of each laser shot before it's turned into heights or maps.

How it's made. Collected by NASA's LVIS airborne laser-and-camera system flown on various research aircraft.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level building-block product; scientists process it into things like terrain and vegetation heights, so most people use the higher-level results rather than these raw waveforms.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › SENSOR COUNTS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1998-03-20 → ongoing
  • Measured byB-200 (LVIS) · C-130 (LVIS) · G-III (LVIS) · G-V (LVIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-168, -3, 17, 72
  • FormatsHDF5
  • StatusACTIVE

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 Level-1B geolocated return energy waveforms collected by the NASA Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS) Facility, an imaging lidar and camera sensor suite.

Get the data

lvisc1b_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="LVISC1B",
    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.