LIDAR Point Cloud Sources

Best sources for free LIDAR point clouds (probably LAS or LAZ format):

US Interagency Elevation Inventory: https://coast.noaa.gov/inventory/

For MICRODEM, the data must be in UTM or geographic coordinates. There are options to reproject with MICRODEM, liblas, or LAStools. LAS lidar

General caveats:

May need to get LAStools to
- reproject data if it is not UTM
- uncompress LAZ data if that is what you get
MICRODEM will identify each project area by the name of the directory. You should put the files for each project in a separate directory, and give it a short, meaningful name

Source and directions	Web site	Notes
USGS TNM Download National Map directions	https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/basic/	Probably the best starting location in the US
3DEP Lidar Explorer	https://apps.nationalmap.gov/lidar-explorer/#/	Alternate USGS source I have not used much
OpenTopography directions	https://opentopography.org/	Mostly US, but now a lot of data from New Zealand. If you have an edu email, you can get USGS and NOAA lidar.
NOAA Coastal Lidar directions	Graphical: http://coast.noaa.gov/dataviewer/?# Projects list: http://coast.noaa.gov/dataviewer/?dataregistry/#/coastallidar Getting lots of data	Some surveys may penetrate water; others only coastal strips of land. For many areas multiple dates are available, showing temporal change. Over 800 data sets now available at OpenTopography to academic users.
Status of state mapping	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lidar_Dataset_(United_States)	My asessment 1/3/2023 is that this listing might not be very current. My list and directions, not exhaustive or necessarily current
Countries with good national lidar: Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, UK, Wales

Problems with ftp data download? Your network might view these downloads as a security risk.

Other sites

https://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/data/lidar.php 2003-2015
Puget Sound LIDAR Consortium. State Plane Coordinate System, in feet. Very nice urban data set of downtown Seattle. They might not so active any more.

LVIS: http://lvis.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.php

Commercial LIDAR clearing house:

http://lidardata.com/ (US only; they have a KMZ file which slows points representing survey areas; you can download a shape file for each showing the actual coverage areas).

Last revised 1/3/2023