USGS 3DEP: LiDAR Point Clouds for the United States and Territories

USGS 3DEP LiDAR Point Clouds provide two realizations of high-resolution elevation data for the conterminous United States, Hawaii, and U.S. territories. The data was collected over an 8-year period by the U.S. Geological Survey's 3D Elevation Program. One resource is a public access, full-density streamable format, while the other is a more complete, requester-pays version of the original raw data.

Use Cases

• Generate high-resolution digital elevation models based on the full-density LiDAR point clouds.
• Analyze terrain for disaster response and mitigation planning based on the national elevation coverage.
• Train machine learning models for land cover classification using the 3D point cloud data.
• Conduct watershed and hydrological analysis based on the detailed elevation information.

Strengths

• Data collection covers the conterminous United States, Hawaii, and U.S. territories.
• Collection was planned over an 8-year period, suggesting a systematic acquisition program.
• Provides two data realizations: a public, streamable format and a more complete, requester-pays version.

Limitations

• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), aggregated by Hobu, Inc.

Collection Method

Collected via light detection and ranging (LiDAR) surveys.

Time Range

Data acquired over an 8-year period (specific dates unknown).

Freshness

null

Geography

Conterminous United States, Hawaii, and U.S. territories.