2015 USGS Lidar: Sandy MD and PA Point Cloud files with Vertical Datum North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88) using GEOID18

Below are links to the files that make up the 2015 USGS Lidar: Sandy MD and PA dataset.

Vertical datumNorth American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88) using GEOID18 in meters
Horizontal projection/datumNAD83(2011) / UTM zone 18N

Informational files are listed first (such as geospatial indices, metadata, and so on), followed by the files. To download in bulk, it is suggested you use a download manager such as wget, uget, or filezilla for example. 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 will take you here).

The files are in LAZ format, a lossless compressed version of the ASPRS LAS format. The compression and decompression can be done with the free and open source 'laszip' program available at https://rapidlasso.de/laszip/ (source at https://github.com/LASzip/LASzip). This is not the same as the more general zip format. You may also want to try the uGet program using the list of URLs in file urllist_2014_sandy_md_pa_m8488.txt. Several posts on the GeoZone blog provide help with downloading, including:

Example to download entire data set using wget (note: sufficiently new and trusted pre-compiled Windows versions can be hard to find):
wget -np -r -nH -L --cut-dirs=2 https://noaa-nos-coastal-lidar-pds.s3.amazonaws.com/laz/geoid18/8488/index.html/
This will give you the directory structure starting with geoid18. Modify the --cut-dirs=2 argument to modify the start directory (e.g. --cut-dirs=4 will start at $missionid). Wget is a command-line program and the output will be to the directory you run it in. More options and information can be found at https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.html. The other options in the example mean:


If you have problems with wget that look like an authorization or certificate issue, you may need to add the option "--no-check-certificate". Windows users may want to install the Windows Subsystem for Linux to get a current wget.

The total size to download all the files is 165G. There are 4161 LAZ files and the summary class table is:

Class NumberClass NamePoints
1Unclassified11485515220
2Ground9708201521
3Low Vegetation39
4Medium Vegetation31
5High Vegetation24
6Building13
7Low Point (noise)2393234
8Model Key Point31
9Water184124257
10Ignored Ground (near breakline)8097675
11High Noise37
12Class 12 - see metadata29
13Road Surface46
14Bridge Deck51
15Class 15 - see metadata6328
16Class 16 - see metadata43
17Overlap default8118776084
18Overlap ground5121363562
25Overlap water34

This dataset has 411 points in additional unexpected classes that may be misclassified.

Cloud Access

This data is in an AWS S3 bucket at s3://noaa-nos-coastal-lidar-pds/laz/geoid18/8488.

Meta Information

Tile Index: tileindex_2014_sandy_md_pa_m8488.zip (Shapefile)
Tile Index: tileindex_2014_sandy_md_pa_m8488.gpkg (Geopackage)
Metadata: metadata_2014_sandy_md_pa.xml
Metadata: metadata_2014_sandy_md_paforHumans.html
XYZ range table: minmax_2014_sandy_md_pa_m8488.csv
URL List: urllist_2014_sandy_md_pa_m8488.txt

Supplemental Info

Files

2015_MD-PA_Sandy_area.kmz

Spatial Temporal Asset Catalog (STAC)

collection.json (See collection in STAC Browser)
noaa_copc_item_collection_m8488.json

Links to Related Datasets

Title Bulk Download Data Access Viewer ID #
2015 USGS Lidar DEM: Sandy MD and PAbulk linkDAV link10305

Point Cloud Directories

Blk_24
Blk_25
Blk_33
Blk_44
Blk_45
Blk_55
Blk_56
Pa

This page is owned by the NOAA Office for Coastal Management and was created by an automated script on 2025-07-05 16:36:43.186174.
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