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Full catalog/OLVIS1A
OLVIS1A·v1·dataset

Geotagged airborne survey photos (LVIS)

LVIS L1A Geotagged Images V001
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 1A active JPEG
In plain English

What it measures. Geotagged aerial photographs, meaning ordinary images tagged with the exact location where each was taken.

How it's made. Captured by NASA digital mapping cameras mounted next to the LVIS airborne laser scanner during aircraft surveys.

How & where you'd use it. Provides visual context to accompany the airborne lidar measurements, helping researchers see what the ground looked like at each surveyed location.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE IMAGERY

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-11-07 → ongoing
  • Measured byB-200 (LVIS-Camera) · G-III (LVIS-Camera) · G-V (LVIS-Camera) · P-3B (LVIS-Camera)
  • Processing levelLevel 1A
  • Spatial extent-168, -35, 27, 88
  • FormatsJPEG
  • 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 geotagged images captured by NASA Digital Mapping Cameras, which were mounted alongside the Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS), an airborne lidar scanning laser altimeter.

Get the data

olvis1a_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OLVIS1A",
    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.