Downloading Lidar Data


When downloading a lidar data set, users will find that each directory contains the LAZ files for the data set, a shapefile providing the tile scheme (zipped as tileindex.zip), and a metadata record (2010_FFS_metadata.xml). File 2010_FFS_minmax.csv contains the xyz ranges for each LAZ file. LAZ files are a compressed version of the standard LAS files (format available at http://asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html) and can be uncompressed using the free LASzip software available at www.laszip.org.



Directories may contain over a thousand files, so users will generally want a mechanism that allows downloading in bulk. One option is to use Wget (freely available at http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/), a command line utility that is very flexible and works on multiple platforms. An example usage of Wget is given below.  Other options are available, and a Web search for "download manager" should provide some useful results. 


The data are all in geographic coordinates using the World Geodetic System of 1984 (WGS84). Vertical units are meters and all have been converted from WGS84 ellipsoid heights to orthometric Earth Gravitational Model 2008 (EGM2008) heights using EGM08.


If you would rather get a subset of the data instead of the full dataset or need custom processing, you can do so through the Digital Coast Data Access Viewer (https://www.coast.noaa.gov/dataviewer/#/lidar/search/where:ID=9303).


Example using WGET


To download all the .laz files in https://coast.noaa.gov/htdata/lidar4_z/egm08/data/9303, execute the following wget command in a command or terminal window:

wget -nd -r -A.laz https://coast.noaa.gov/htdata/lidar4_z/egm08/data/9303



For More Information

NOAA Office for Coastal Management

(843) 740-1200

coastal.info@noaa.gov