2019 - 2020 USGS/NOAA Topobathy Lidar: CNMI (Aguijan, Rota, Saipan, Tinian) Point Cloud files with Orthometric Vertical Datum Northern Marianas Vertical Datum of 2003 (NMVD03) using GEOID12B

Below are links to the files that make up the 2019 - 2020 USGS/NOAA Topobathy Lidar: CNMI (Aguijan, Rota, Saipan, Tinian) dataset in an orthometric vertical datum Northern Marianas Vertical Datum of 2003 (NMVD03) using GEOID12B. This HTML file is here to emulate the access you would have gotten through an ftp site. The files containing geospatial indices, metadata, etc., are listed first, followed by the files. To download in bulk, it is suggested you use a program such as wget (example below). The geospatial index file in shapefile format also has a URL attribute that some GIS programs can use to download files. You can also subset the data, make derived products, and change projection, datum, etc., using the Digital Coast Data Access Viewer (add to cart, the link to bulk download or LAZ fmt will take you here).

The data are all in geographic coordinates using the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). The version of the NAD83 datum may vary slightly, but all are one of the updated realizations such as the High Accuracy Reference Network (HARN), Continuously Operating Reference System of 1996 (CORS96), or National Spatial Reference System of 2007 (NSRS2007), and not the original NAD83(86). This may not be evident in the metadata. Vertical units are meters and all have been converted from NAD83 ellipsoid heights to orthometric Northern Marianas Vertical Datum of 2003 (NMVD03) heights using GEOID12B.

The files are in LAZ format, a lossless compressed version of the ASPRS LAS format. The compression and decompression is done with the free and open source 'laszip' program available at https://laszip.org. This is not the same as the more general zip format. Many geospatial programs will read LAZ files natively and decompression is often not necessary. There is a list of software with native support on the laszip site. This data is LAS 1.4 format compressed using laszip in native mode. You'll need laszip version 170330 or higher (or tools compiled with at least that version of laszip) to read it.

There are many download managers you can use to get all the data. An example is the uGet program using the list of URLs in file urllist9473.txt. Several posts on the GeoZone blog provide help with downloading, including:

The total size to download all the files is 126G. There are 2192 LAZ files and the summary class table is:

Class NumberClass NamePoints
1Unclassified15899775483
2Ground2648850672
7Low Point (noise)553844231
9Water721918283
17Bridge Deck55192
18High Noise566190500
40Bathymetric point1234498038
41Water surface949628389
42Derived water surface2374138818
43Submerged Object102523
45Water column2072908179

Cloud Access

This data is now in an AWS S3 bucket at s3://noaa-nos-coastal-lidar-pds/laz/geoid12b/9473.

Meta Info

Tile Index: tileindex.zip (Shapefile)
                cnmi2019_islands_index.gpkg (GeoPackage)
Metadata: cnmi2019_islands_metadata.xml
Metadata: cnmi2019_islands_metadata.html
XYZ range table: cnmi2019_islands_minmax.csv
URL List: urllist9473.txt is a list of all the URLs for batch downloading.

Supplemental Info

supplemental/cnmi2019_islands_m9473.kmz

Point Clouds

Subdirectories

aguijan
rota
saipan
tinian

This page is owned by the NOAA Office for Coastal Management and was created by an automated script on Tue Mar 15 16:05:10 EDT 2022.