New USGS 3DEP Datasets Available via OpenTopography
New lidar datasets throughout the US have been added to the publicly accessible, USGS 3DEP Amazon Web Services (AWS) bucket. This latest release expands the coverage by an additional 81 datasets, or 2.6 trillion lidar points over 550,000 km2 covering the following states: Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. Registered OpenTopography users with an account associated with a valid '.edu' email address will be able to seamlessly discover, download, and process this data via the standard OpenTopography interface. OpenTopography’s mission is to make high resolution topography easier to discover and use. By enabling the suite of OpenTopography’s processing tools on the USGS 3DEP point cloud data, we hope to provide easy access to this collection for a broader user community, effectively increasing the value and impact of this important data collection.
As always, if you have feedback on this new OpenTopography functionality we encourage you to contact us via email or to reach out via our social media channels.
Map showing newly released USGS 3DEP coverage (red polygons), adding to the previous 3DEP coverage (green polygons) that is now available through OpenTopography.
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. 3D lidar point cloud colored by elevation. This section of the park is famous for its many "hoodoos" - tall spires of rock that protrude from an arid landscape. To read more about how hoodoos are formed, see the park's website