NOAA Coastal LIDAR Data

NOAA Coastal LIDAR Data

Switch to street view
Zoom in to the area
Use blue pencil icon, and outline the box you want
Insure you are getting elevation data. The Landcover might be higher resolution than the 30 m NLCD in some areas. I have not tried to get imagery, but in some places they appear to have NAIP.
Add data sets to the cart. Insure you only get ones that say LIDAR if you want the point clouds, and not those that say DEM unless you are sure that is what you want. You can create the DTM or DSM from the point cloud.
If the files are too large, restrict the area. With lidar you should be looking at small areas in great detail.
Go to the cart
Hit next

Bulk download takes you to a page with options, but it will be less convenient than going through the cart.

Projects list: http://coast.noaa.gov/dataviewer/?dataregistry/#/coastallidar has descriptions of the layers, and you can download from the description.

Recognizing the lidar point clouds

Recognizing the Grids:

Cart

Suggested settings on checkout:

Get the point cloud for flexibility; you can create a grid in MICRODEM from the point cloud. If you do want a grid, get "Raster: as the output product, and pick the 32 bit Geotiff. You could also have picked the DEM in the previous step when you picked data sets.
Get everything in meters.
Get NAD83. If you get WGS84, the vertical datum will be WGS84/ITRF94 Ellispsoid, which will probably not be useful.
Get LAZ for files that are easier to deal with; they will come zipped. Get LAZ for files about 10% the size of the uncompressed LAS and will be somewhat smaller than the zipped LAS. You can Decompress after download, but you will have to get the LAStools decompressor for LAZ file and place it in the correct directory.
Get all data classes. This setting is not sticky, and you have to pick it for every data set.
Copy choices from one dataset to another by highlighting the second data set on the left, and then using the drop down box in the upper right. Check very carefully that all settings are correctly set (we have had issues with the data classes having to be set for every dataset).
Do not hit Next until all choices are set for all data sets. There is no back button on the next screen.

You will get an email when the data is ready. Problems with download?

When you download, put each data set in its own directory, and carefully name it (no spaces).

There may be laz files in the zip when you unzip. The are double compressing to keep the lidar data with its metadata, a text file and a shapefile.
You can uncompress all the laz files, in multiple directories, with a single command

Tiles are named either as quarter quads or a smaller variation.
- Quarter quad naming is YYXXXyx indicating the southeast corner location where
- YY = integer latitude
- XXX = integer longitude (positive west)
- y = a letter (a-h) representing 1/8 degree of latitude (a = 0, h = 0.875).
- x = a number (1-8) representing 1/8 degree of longitude Thus, quarter quad 42082b5 has its southeast corner at 42.125N 82.5W.
The scheme for smaller tiles is YYXXX_yy_xx, where
- yy = hundredths of a degree of latitude
- xx = hundredths of a degree of longitude Thus, tile 42082_12_50 has its southeast corner at 42.12N 82.5W.
Only tiles with data are included.

By each of the projects, there is now a bulk download option
These can be monstrously big (one is 119 GB with LAZ compression, so likely at least a terrabyte in LAS format) and cover a very large area
You can set a shapefile with the tile index, and get just the tiles you need
Having tiled data is extremely useful for large areas
You can use uGet to get a list of files
You can also download files by name
This gives you only one choice of projection
You can get a URL list, which you can feed to MICRODEM's downloader
You can get a tile index shapefile. Display it on a map, filter to just the area you want, and extract the files names in the URL field (click on field name, and choose list of unique values), and then feed that list to MICRODEM's downloader

Last revision 2/28/2022