LVIS Gridded Canopy Height and Cover Across North America

Airborne lidar data provides gridded metrics of vegetation structure from NASA's LVIS-Facility instrument for 2017 and 2019. The 30-meter resolution grids include canopy relative height, complexity, canopy cover, and ground elevation across Arctic, boreal, temperate, and sub-tropical landscapes in North and Central America. This dataset supports the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) and calibration of the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI).

Use Cases

• Calibrating and validating spaceborne lidar instruments like GEDI using canopy relative height (RH) and canopy cover (CC) metrics.
• Modeling forest biomass and carbon stocks by analyzing vertical canopy structure and complexity.
• Monitoring changes in Arctic and boreal ecosystems using spatially coincident legacy lidar for comparison.
• Assessing habitat structure and biodiversity through detailed canopy cover estimates at various height thresholds.
• Generating high-resolution baseline elevation models from the provided ground elevation grids.

Strengths

• Provides detailed vertical canopy structure with 30-meter resolution grids derived from ~10-meter diameter lidar waveforms.
• Covers a wide range of biomes, including Arctic, boreal, temperate, and sub-tropical landscapes across North and Central America.
• Supports major scientific initiatives, with data explicitly collected for ABoVE and GEDI-related science.

Limitations

• Key technical specifications like total row count, dataset size, and specific column names are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the 'last updated' date, with one listing 2026-03-13 and another listing 2019-08-08.
• The license is inconsistently reported as 'other-license-specified' or 'None', requiring user verification.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS)-Facility and LVIS-Classic instruments, flown on aircraft in 2017 and 2019.

Collection Method

Airborne lidar waveforms collected over footprints of ~10-m diameter and processed into Level 3 (L3) gridded metrics.

Time Range

2017, 2019

Freshness

2026-03-13 17:35:36.476272

Geography

Arctic and boreal Alaska and Western Canada (ABoVE domain), continental U.S., and central America.