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Full catalog/SNEX_MCS_Lidar
SNEX_MCS_Lidar·v1·dataset

Airborne laser maps of snow depth (Mores Creek Summit)

SnowEx Mores Creek Summit (MCS) Airborne LiDAR Survey V001
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 4 GeoTIFF
In plain English

What it measures. Detailed elevation maps of a mountain area in Idaho, including the bare ground, the snow-covered surface, snow depth, and tree canopy height.

How it's made. Generated from laser (lidar) scans flown by helicopter over the Mores Creek headwaters between 2021 and 2025, turning raw point measurements into terrain and snow-depth models.

How & where you'd use it. Supports tracking how snow accumulates and melts across a watershed month to month, valuable for water supply and snow-science research.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION › DIGITAL ELEVATION/TERRAIN MODEL (DEM)LAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION › Digital Surface Model (DSM)CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW DEPTHBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › CANOPY CHARACTERISTICS › VEGETATION HEIGHT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2021-03-10 → 2025-05-01
  • Measured byHELICOPTER (LIDAR)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-115.7305, 43.91365, -115.64244, 43.9748
  • FormatsGeoTIFF
  • 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 provides digital terrain models (DTM), digital surface models (DSM) snow depth models, and canopy height models (CHM), derived from point cloud data (available as <a href="https://nsidc.org/data/SNEX_MCS_Lidar_Raw">SnowEx Mores Creek Summit (MCS) Airborne LiDAR Survey Raw, Version 1</a>) acquired by airborne lidar scanning. Data were 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. <p></p> In October 2025, corrupted data files were updated for the following acquisition dates: 8 December 2022 and 9 February 2023.

Get the data

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

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