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Seamless 1 meter Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) - USGS National Map 3DEP Downloadable Data Collection

To advance the U.S. Geological Survey 3D National Topography Model (3DNTM) including the next generation of the 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) and the 3D Hydrography Program (3DHP), the USGS researched and created a Seamless 1-meter resolution (S1M) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for the conterminous United States (CONUS). This dataset is a result of a joint project between the National Geospatial Technical Operations Center (NGTOC) and the Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS) of the USGS National Geospatial Directorate (NGD). Scientists and resource managers can use the S1M data for global change research, hydrologic modeling, resource monitoring, mapping, visualization, and many other applications. A S1M DEM requires merging multiple lidar projects in which the lidar sensor, bare-earth DEM generation methodology, source resolution, datums/projection, unit of measure, and geoid (mean sea level model) can vary between projects. This tile of the Seamless 1-m DEM was created from the best available 3DEP Original Product Resolution source DEMs from one or several intersecting 3DEP data collection projects. Spatially referenced metadata are contained within an open-source GeoPackage that stores footprints for each of the input source DEMs along with source data characteristics. The source DEMs were processed to align vertically to North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (EPSG: 5703) updated to the current GEOID18 model and projected horizontally to North American Datum of 1983 (2011) USA Contiguous Albers Equal Area Conic projection (EPSG: 6350). Horizontal units and elevation values are in meters. Large data voids wider than 10 meters in the tile were backfilled with 1/9 arc-second or 1/3 arc-second DEMs in the 3DEP data repository while small data voids were interpolated across using bilinear interpolation. For tiles containing more than one 3DEP project or with large data voids, up to three blending routines were used: a simple blend, narrow blend, or a backfill blend. The spatial metadata GeoPackage contains information on where backfilling, void interpolation, and blending occurs within the tile. The tile spatial extent is 10 km x 10 km. The S1M DEM is available in a Cloud Optimized Georeferenced Tagged Image File Format (GeoTIFF). The S1M DEM has floating point numeric values and a spatial resolution of one meter. NoData values (areas where data is incomplete due to lack of full data coverage) are represented with the numeric value of -999999. Other 3DEP products are nationally seamless DEMs in resolutions of 1/3, 1, and 2 arc seconds. These seamless DEMs were referred to as the National Elevation Dataset (NED) from about 2000 through 2015 at which time they became the seamless DEM layers under the 3DEP program and the NED name and system were retired. Other 3DEP products include project-based one-meter DEMs in CONUS, five-meter DEMs in Alaska as well as various source datasets including the lidar point cloud and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (Ifsar) digital surface models and intensity images. All 3DEP products are public domain.

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Author(s) National Geospatial Technical orcid, Earth Resources Observation orcid, National Geospatial Program orcid
Publication Date 2025
Beginning Date of Data 2024
Ending Date of Data present
Data Contact
DOI https://doi.org/10.5066/P13LJKFS
Citation Technical, N.G., Observation, E.R., and Program, N.G., 2025, Seamless 1 meter Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) - USGS National Map 3DEP Downloadable Data Collection: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P13LJKFS.
Metadata Contact
Metadata Date 2024-11-26
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Citations of these data No citations of these data are known at this time.
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License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
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Harvest Source: ScienceBase
Harvest Date: 2025-08-19T05:09:35.905Z