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Full catalog/LVISC2
LVISC2·v1·dataset

Ground and treetop heights from airborne laser (LVIS)

LVIS Classic L2 Geolocated Surface Elevation and Canopy Height Product V001
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 2 active ASCII
In plain English

What it measures. Precise ground-surface heights and treetop (canopy) heights along flight paths.

How it's made. Collected by NASA's airborne LVIS laser (lidar) and camera instrument flown on aircraft, processed into geolocated elevation and canopy measurements.

How & where you'd use it. Used to study forest structure, terrain, and ice surfaces, and to help calibrate or check satellite measurements.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › GLACIER ELEVATION/ICE SHEET ELEVATIONCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE ELEVATIONLAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATIONBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › CANOPY CHARACTERISTICS › VEGETATION HEIGHT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1998-03-20 → ongoing
  • Measured byB-200 (LVIS) · C-130 (LVIS) · G-III (LVIS) · G-V (LVIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-168, -3, 17, 72
  • FormatsASCII
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Measure sea ice, snow cover and glaciers
  • Watch ice-sheet elevation change
  • Track freeze/thaw and permafrost
Official description

This data set contains Level-2 geolocated surface elevation and canopy height measurements collected by the NASA Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS) Facility, an imaging lidar and camera sensor suite.

Get the data

lvisc2_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="LVISC2",
    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.