The EarthScope Northern California Lidar project acquired high resolution airborne laser swath mapping imagery along major active faults as part of the EarthScope Facility project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Between this project and the previously conducted B4 project, also funded by NSF, the entire San Andreas fault system has now been imaged with high resolution airborne lidar, along with many other important geologic features. EarthScope is funded by NSF and conducted in partnership with the USGS and NASA. GeoEarthScope is a component of EarthScope that includes the acquisition of aerial and satellite imagery and geochronology. EarthScope is managed at UNAVCO.Please use the following language to acknowledge EarthScope Lidar:This material is based on services provided to the Plate Boundary Observatory by NCALM (http://www.ncalm.org). PBO is operated by UNAVCO for EarthScope (http://www.earthscope.org) and supported by the National Science Foundation (No. EAR-0350028 and EAR-0732947).

This storymap is intended to illustrate what Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR or lidar) is, how an investment in statewide coverage will benefit California, and provide examples of how it is already being used where the data is available.

Product: Processed, classified lidar point cloud data tiles in LAS 1.4 format. Geographic Extent: QL2 Area - Approximately 8,146 square miles in portions of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura Counties QL1 Area - Approximately 1,343 square miles in portion of Santa Barbara County.

Dataset Description: QL2 Area: The CA SoCal Wild...

Product: These lidar data are processed Classified LAS 1.4 files, formatted to individual 1000 m x 1000 m tiles; used to create intensity images, 3D breaklines, and hydro-flattened DEMs as necessary. Geographic Extent: 27 counties in California, covering approximately 16846 total square miles. Dataset Description: The Northern California - QL2 project called for the planning, acquisition, p...

This dataset contains linework of lineaments mapped on 4 <1-m-resolution lidar datasets and the 10-m-resolution National Elevation Dataset digital elevation models in the Pit River region of northeastern California. Lineaments are classified by confidence in tectonic origin, map certainty, and the ages of the bedrock and surficial deposits they cross.

The EarthScope Northern California Lidar project acquired high resolution lidar topographic data along major active faults in the Northern San Andreas Fault system, as part of the EarthScope Facility project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Publications associated with this dataset can be found at NCALM's Data Tracking Center

This dataset is intended for researchers interested in active tectonics and earthquake hazards research in the Central Coast region of California, and the areas north and east of San Francisco Bay. The target areas were developed and defined by USGS scientists in collaboration with colleagues working in these regions. The target areas in the Central Coast region are: the Big Sur area and the Oceanic and San Simeon Faults. The target areas in northern California are: the Bartlett Springs and Berryessa Faults, the Greenville Fault, and the Rodgers Creek Fault - Maacama Fault stepover area. The data collection and processing were purchased by the U.S. Geological Survey using funds provided via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

Original Product: These lidar data are processed Classified LAS 1.4 files, formatted to individual 1000 m x 1000 m tiles; used to create intensity images, 3D breaklines, hydro-flattened DEMs, and spatial metadata such as the maximum surface height rasters and swath separation imagery as necessary.

Original Geographic Extent: 3 counties in California, covering approximately 485 square miles i...

This part of the data release presents topography data from northern Monterey Bay, California collected in September 2017 with a terrestrial lidar scanner.

Product: These lidar data are processed Classified LAS 1.4 files, formatted to individual 1000 m x 1000 m tiles; used to create intensity images, 3D breaklines, and hydro-flattened DEMs as necessary. Geographic Extent: 8 counties in California: Butte, Lassen, Marin, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Tehama, Yuba Dataset Description: The Northern California - QL1 project called for the planning, acqui...

The EarthScope Southern & Eastern California Lidar Project acquired high resolution lidar topography data along major active faults as part of the EarthScope Facility project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Publications associated with this dataset can be found at NCALM's Data Tracking Center

Bathymetric LiDAR data from the upper Sacramento River in northern California were acquired September 10-17, 2017, to support research on remote sensing of rivers, particularly mapping water depth, and to facilitate efforts to characterize salmon habitat conditions and geomorphic change along the upper Sacramento River. These data were collected using a Riefl VQ-880-Gairborne laser scanning system designed for combined hydrographic and topographic surveying. The flight was conducted by Quantum Spatial, Inc. (QSI); QSI also performed all processing of the raw LiDAR data. The data were acquired from fixed wing aircraft and were used to produce tiled point clouds in a .las format and interpolated topo-bathymetric raster Digital Elevation Models (DEM's) with a 1 m cell size in an Arc GRID format. The rasters provided in this data release are subsets focused on the reach of the Sacramento River where it is joined by its tributary Cottonwood Creek; supporting field data from this reac ...

The Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of Expertise (JALBTCX) has performed a coastal survey along the Pacific coast in 2009. The data types collected include bathymetry and topographic lidar point data, true color imagery and hyperspectral imagery. The collection effort follows the coastline and extends 500m inland and 1000m offshore or to laser extinction, whichever comes first. Topographic lidar is collected with 200% coverage, yielding a nominal 1m x 1m post-spacing. Where water conditions permit, the bathymetry lidar data will have a nominal post spacing of 4m x 4m. The true color imagery will have a pixel size approximately 35cm and the hyperspectral imagery will be provided in 1m pixels containing 36 bands between 375 - 1050 nm with 19 nm bandwidth. The final data will be tied to horizontal positions, provided in decimal degrees of latitude and longitude, and are referenced to the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). Vertical positions are referenced to the NAD83 ellipsoid and provided in meters. The National Geodetic Survey's (NGS) GEOID03 model is used to transform the vertical positions from ellipsoid to orthometric heights referenced to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88).

The EarthScope Southern & Eastern California Lidar Project acquired high resolution lidar topography data along major active faults as part of the EarthScope Facility project. EarthScope is funded by NSF and conducted in partnership with the USGS and NASA. GeoEarthScope is a component of EarthScope that includes the acquisition of aerial and satellite imagery and geochronology. EarthScope is managed at UNAVCO.Please use the following language to acknowledge EarthScope Lidar:This material is based on services provided to the Plate Boundary Observatory by NCALM (http://www.ncalm.org). PBO is operated by UNAVCO for EarthScope (http://www.earthscope.org) and supported by the National Science Foundation (No. EAR-0350028 and EAR-0732947).

Overview The purpose of this dataset is to provide preliminary filtered, averaged lidar data and standardize the data format of various datastreams from the buoy into NetCDF. Data Quality Standard filtering thresholds on the averaged data were applied and several data format issues of the raw data were streamlined to create a standardized NetCDF format data. Uncertainty The uncertainty of lidar data has not been analyzed, but they are not expected to deviate from instrument technical specifications.

Overview Deployment off the coast of Morro Bay, California. Data Details Windcube Data Files: lidar.z06.00.20200929.000000.gyro.7z lidar.z06.00.20200929.000000.rtd.7z lidar.z06.00.20200929.000000.sta.7z lidar.z06.00.20200929.000000.stdrtd.7z lidar.z06.00.20200929.000000.stdsta.7z The Windcube data is compressed via 7-zip: "sta" files are 10 minute averaged data. "rtd" files are ~1 second data. "gyro" files are buoy movement data. 7z is the new archive format, providing high compression ratio. The main features of 7z format: Open architecture High compression ratio Strong AES-256 encryption Ability of using any compression, conversion or encryption method Supporting files with sizes up to 16000000000 GB Unicode file names Solid compressing Archive headers compressing 7z has open architecture, so it can support any new compression methods. https://www.7-zip.org/7z.html Data Quality Additional meta data to follow. PNNL recommends adding 180 degrees to the lidar wind directions at Morro Bay, as there is a directional issue associated with GPS cables being swapped on the buoy during buoy commissioning. The 180 degrees offset is going to be very close to our final post-processed data, that will be uploaded at the end of the campaign in September or November 2021. Please email Alicia Gorton with any questions by clicking on her name under Contacts. (alicia.gorton@pnnl.gov)

This data set is derived from the original 2005 data collected over the southern San Andreas and San Jacinto fault zones in southern California, USA. These data have provided a fundamental resource for study of active faulting in southern California since they were released in 2005. However, these data were not classified in a manner that allowed for easy differentiation between bare ground surfaces and the objects and vegetation above that surface. This reprocessed (classified) dataset allows researchers easy and direct access to a "bare-earth" digital elevation data set as gridded half-meter resolution rasters (elevation and shaded relief) , "full-feature" digital elevation models as gridded one-meter resolution rasters (elevation and shaded relief) and as classified (according to ASPRS standards) point clouds in binary .laz format, and a spatial index in shapefile and Google Earth KML format.

Following the devastating Los Angeles, California wildfires in January 2025, AlertCalifornia sponsored NV5 to acquire high-resolution airborne lidar data for the Palisades and Eaton impact areas. Through its partnership with University of California San Diego (UCSD), NV5 donated the interim data via the USGS to make them publicly available for use by the emergency response community and others.

This dataset contains preliminary digital elevation model data for response and recovery as part of the Palisades wildfire in California. Lidar was collected and used to create a 0.5 meter raster DTM and DSM. DEMs have not been manually reviewed and should be considered preliminary. The response and recovery for the Palisades wildfire in California called for the planning, acquisition, processing, and derivative products of lidar data to be collected at a nominal pulse spacing (NPS) of 0.25 meters. This data is provisional and was created for the immediate disaster response for the Palisades wildfire. NV5 Inc, UCSD, and USGS make no guarantee or warrantee as to the data's completeness and accuracy, and as a result, anyone using this data is doing so at their sole risk. Lidar was collected in winter 2025, while no snow was on the ground and rivers were at or below normal levels.

The State Coastal Conservancy and NASA recently provided the NCRP with funding to create a set of county-by-county lidar derivatives across the North Coast of California. Working in collaboration with the Coastal San Luis RCD, the San Mateo County RCD, and Solano County, the NCRP created lidar products across 14 California Counties (see the figure 2 below). These lidar products provide land managers public datasets depicting fine scale topography and forest structure that provide important foundational data for various applications. Figure 1 provides a very high level conceptual illustration of how the derivatives 'unlock' the point cloud, providing land managers lacking access to expensive software and lidar processing expertise with actionable data for numerous applications.

Original Product: These are Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data for California as part of the required deliverables for the Northern California - QL1 project. Class 2 (ground) LiDAR points in conjunction with the hydro breaklines were used to create a 1 meter hydro-flattened Raster DEM.

Original Geographic Extent: 8 counties in California: Butte, Lassen, Marin, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Tehama...