ABoVE: LVIS L3 Gridded Vegetation Structure across North America, 2017 and 2019

In 2017, the LVIS-Facility instrument was flown at a nominal flight altitude of 28,000 ft onboard a Dynamic Aviation Super King Air B200T. In 2019, the LVIS-Facility and LVIS-Classic instruments were flown at a nominal flight altitude of 41,000 feet onboard the NASA Gulfstream V. LVIS data are collected as waveforms over footprints of ~10-m diameter.

The L3 data include grids of canopy relative height (RH), complexity, canopy cover (CC), ground elevation, and the number of LVIS footprints available to produce a pixel's estimate.. These 30-m resolution grids describe the vertical column of the vegetation canopy in detail with relative canopy height metrics and are enriched with an additional set of canopy cover estimates at a variety of height thresholds. The LVIS-Facility instrument 2017 and 2019 acquisitions span Arctic, boreal, temperate, and sub-tropical landscapes in support of a variety of Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE)- and Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI)-related science.