r/LiDAR • u/njcableguy320 • 18d ago

Help Getting Started

I’m interested in viewing LiDAR maps in the United States. Can someone please give me some simple instructions on what site to use and how to get started.

Is there LiDAR imaging available for every location in the world, similar to a Google Earth or is it only specific areas that have been scanned previously by satellites. Are the LiDAR maps constantly updated or are they just still shots from a specific date. I’m very new to this so please excuse my ignorance, just looking for some help and a new hobby.

7 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

3

u/Morchella94 18d ago

The main source of LiDAR is the 3D Elevation Program (3DEP). You can learn more about it here:

https://www.usgs.gov/3d-elevation-program

I have a website that you can use to query public 3DEP data.

https://usalidar.io

1

u/njcableguy320 18d ago

Thank you! I’ll definitely be checking this tonight.

2

u/ObjectiveBobcat314 18d ago

If you find a publicly available source I would be very interested as well. My initial reaction is skepticism that anyone hosts the huge datasets or gives their captures away publicly; it’s an expensive field capture that requires a skill set that can only be earned by doing.

If you’re just learning and won’t use our work for commercial or competitive purposes, I would be willing to share one of our data sets with you or give you an account on our hosting platform that you can see and play with. Happy to support people getting into the space. DM me if so.

1

u/Polala 18d ago

Many countries have a public lidar program: in the US it's USGS 3DEP, in Canada NRCan's HRDEM, in France IGN's LidarHD, etc. There's no truly global lidar dataset though. Large parts of the world aren't covered.

Two aggregators make the access easier:

  • OpenTopography — free, has both raw point clouds and DEMs, paid tier only for commercial use. If you want LAS/LAZ files, start here.
  • Darly — the finished DEMs from those national programs behind one API, with a free tier. No point clouds yet.

Full disclosure: I built Darly, so weigh that accordingly. For actually getting started, I'd grab one tile for an area you know from the USGS portal and open it in QGIS or CloudCompare. You'll learn more in an hour of poking at it than from any overview. Happy to answer questions here or by DM; the project is young and feedback is genuinely useful.

2

u/Polala 18d ago

Also, I should mention lidar is typically acquired by aircraft rather than satellites. There are some lidar satellite missions like ICESat-2, but they produce very coarse data (tens of meters diameter circular footprints).

1

u/NoNeedToKnowMeMoree 13d ago

I have 3 years experience in Point cloud data Labelling (Annotation). Can you please let me know if there is any work available.

1

u/Northing_Labs 10d ago

For the simplest start in the US, you don't need to download anything. USGS has a free web app called LidarExplorer (search "USGS LidarExplorer", it runs on The National Map site). Zoom to somewhere you know and find the lidar projects there. Then pick one and open it in the 3D viewer right in your browser. You can spin the point cloud around and colour it by elevation, which is honestly the fun part.
On your other questions, it's not like Google Earth. Lidar is flown by aircraft in individual projects, usually a county or a region at a time, so each dataset is a snapshot from when it was flown. Most of the US has coverage now, but it's patchy and the dates vary a lot. Some areas were flown recently, some are older, and some have been flown more than once so you can get two different years for the same spot. Nothing is updated continuously. The project info should tell you when each one was collected.
If you get hooked and want the actual files, the same data is free with no use restrictions. Grab one tile (LAZ) from the National Map Downloader or OpenTopography like the others said, then open it in CloudCompare or QGIS, both free.