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Full catalog/LVISF1B
LVISF1B·v1·dataset

Raw laser pulses bounced off the ground (LVIS)

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

What it measures. Contains the raw shapes of laser pulses that were fired down from aircraft and bounced back from the ground, along with where each pulse landed.

How it's made. Collected by NASA's LVIS airborne laser (lidar) and camera system flown on research aircraft, at an early processing stage close to the raw signal.

How & where you'd use it. A building-block input most people use through higher-level products; the return waveforms are later turned into measurements of land, vegetation height, and ice surface shape.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › SENSOR COUNTS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-11-07 → ongoing
  • Measured byB-200 (LVIS) · G-III (LVIS) · G-V (LVIS) · P-3B (LVIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-167, -35, 27, 88
  • 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

lvisf1b_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="LVISF1B",
    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.