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Full catalog/SNEX_MCS_Lidar_Raw
SNEX_MCS_Lidar_Raw·v1·dataset

Raw airborne laser scans of snowy terrain (Idaho)

SnowEx Mores Creek Summit (MCS) Airborne LiDAR Survey Raw V001
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 0 LAZ
In plain English

What it measures. Raw airborne laser scans of a snowy mountain region in central Idaho, collected to track how snow is distributed month to month over several years.

How it's made. Gathered by a laser scanner (lidar) flown on a helicopter over the Mores Creek Headwaters between 2021 and 2025.

How & where you'd use it. This is an unprocessed building-block dataset. Most people use the finished products derived from it, such as terrain, snow-depth, and tree-height maps.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › LIDAR

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2021-03-10 → 2025-05-01
  • Measured byHELICOPTER (LIDAR)
  • Processing levelLevel 0
  • Spatial extent-115.7305, 43.91365, -115.64244, 43.9748
  • FormatsLAZ
  • 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

The data set described here provides raw lidar data collected as part of a multi-year effort to monitor monthly snow distribution over a 35 km² region of the Mores Creek Headwaters in the Boise Mountains of central Idaho between 2021 and 2025. Data acquisition in 2021 overlapped temporally with the NASA SnowEx 2021 field campaign. Digital terrain models (DTM), digital surface models (DSM) snow depth models, and canopy height models (CHM) derived from these point cloud data are available as <a href="https://nsidc.org/data/SNEX_MCS_Lidar">SnowEx Mores Creek Summit (MCS) Airborne LiDAR Survey, Version 1</a>.

Get the data

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

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