The US has incredible topography! USGS recently released 1 m LiDAR elevation data covering the entire country, and their “3D Elevation as Art” series shows just how detailed it is. I used Astra/Codex to build an app where you can slide between the LiDAR elevation maps and optical imagery... for every state. It’s extremely satisfying watching mountain ranges, watersheds, riverbeds, and other terrain suddenly appear in the LiDAR data. Check it out here and let me know what your favorite results are:show more

All credit for the actual data to the United Stage Geological Survey @USGS , and you can download each 1 m map here:

I am also currently downloading the raw 1 m datasets from the USGS to try to make a town by town elevation viewer, but the data files are massive! 500 GB to 1 TB for each state...

Made with Codex/Astra @thsottiaux Having a lot of fun making custom geospatial apps!

Major LIDAR App update! - 1 m amazing local resolution! - Tiled loading and zoom-out coverage - Address/coordinate search - Elevation rescaling - Downloadable animation GIF

@USGS 👀

@USGS Beautiful! One minor bug, if you zoom way in (like to 16 m/px level), the registration between the two images needs to be fixed, as an offset appears between the LIDAR and the optical image. It's probably more prominent the more east you go in the state.

@USGS Thanks for the bug report Bill... I am seeing that now! Working on the fix. Important to get the close shots working because those are the coolest comparisons.

@USGS Cool. Also, it'd be great to support search for a particular location. There might be aspects for search and/or a topography layer that you can use from my vibe-coded TopoView. Source code:

@USGS this is a cool one Bill! Mt Hood looking good!

@USGS Ran an update last night to make the local scaling work better. Definitely lines up better, at the cost of loading time. Working that as my credits reset!

@USGS Love this Matt! Looks just a little off in our area near Texas Hill Country. Canyon Lake highlighted offset between LiDAR data & mapping

@USGS Thanks for checking out the app Chris! yep at the local level, there is a lot of lining up to do, working on that now! Mainly caused by the slight difference in projections in the LIDAR source image and the optical imagery

@USGS These issues have been resolved!

@USGS That was really cool man, thanks for sharing!

@USGS Appreciate you checking it out Dave!

@USGS incredibly detailed, less than a vertical mile difference east to west but every gorge and waterway shows how deep the water carves

@USGS or, trivially, add heightmap, can give you code for this

@USGS pretty cool. is there a legend i'm missing to match colors to elevation levels?

@USGS I am trying to get the elevation profiles loaded onto the app. The USGS has them on their published maps here:

@USGS hell yeah thanks matt

@USGS I can't seem to get a few states to line up

@USGS The overlap projection errors have been resolved, the data at the local level is amazing. You can now make your own animations too.

@USGS Always did, before the Internet I would print topo maps on transparencies and overlay them on lakes to figure out all the terrain and where the fish were.

@USGS cool!

@USGS Superb. Thanks for sharing

@USGS Appreciate it !

@USGS the state-by-state slider makes the 1 m lidar detail feel instantly tangible. which landscape surprised you most once the optical imagery disappeared?

@USGS The watersheds and dried river beds have been the coolest so far. Louisiana by the Mississippi delta is really cool!

@USGS Great site A bit difficult to scroll and select any “W states” Could also swap in a search by text bar Super cool

@USGS Thanks for pointing this out, on my side the state selection looks good down through the W's but could be a dynamic scaling issue depending on the browser size. We can't have Wyoming left out of here, especially how cool it looks.

@USGS iOS + safari Bounce back to “a” works like a charm Bounce down to “bottom” ends up bouncing back to top. Just needs a second landing bounce at end of selection window to mirror the top landing bounce (split input window into 50:50 rooftop rather than slanted single roof)

@USGS I think the projections need to be standardized for the New Hampshire map, none of the layers line up.

@USGS Working this now. Can't have the Live Free state be misaligned!

@USGS Great stuff

@USGS @MoundLore

@USGS Very cool. That 'squiggle' in East Georgia is really neat.

@USGS This is amazing. Thank you for making/sharing!

@USGS Thanks for checking it out!

@USGS This is super cool, Matt. It would. Be great to be able to enter a location to zoom to, to be able to save and recall locations, and to see the actual elevation of any given pixel. Thanks for sharing this!

@USGS Next updates will definitely have an area of interest finder. Good idea, thanks for checking it out!

@USGS You can now do this!

@USGS The continent just got its x-ray.

@USGS Very first thing I did was go on and look for Area 51.... I think I found it.

@USGS Check out the geo referencing of the imagery v. lidar. The Great Salt lake/Provo lake suddenly grows mountains when to slide over it

Yeah it gets pretty buggy as you zoom in, in the process of addressing that. the problem is basically that the LIDAR source images from USGS are not georeferenced in my app, so as the scale changes it no longer lines up. Working a fix now that would not need me to store 20 TB of georeferenced LIDAR data on my personal site!

@USGS Ahh the struggle of dealing with high quality lidar! 😅

@USGS tried solving the local geo-referencing on this update. Takes some extra time to load the higher res local data but works much better on the small scale.

@USGS This is really cool. Thanks for making and sharing it!

@USGS LiDAR is also how lost cities surface under canopy. At Minanbé a Maya city’s outline arrived years before anyone walked it. The scan is the map. Dating still happens on the ground.

@USGS Very neat

@USGS I like it. You have a significant projection offset in North Carolina though.

@USGS Thanks for pointing that out, yeah the projections between LIDAR and optical are different which creates a scaling issue. I will get the great state of North Carolina fixed. Awesome views of the estuary/tributary regions on the coast in the LIDAR image.

@USGS I'm always fascinated by the mountain to piedmont transition

@USGS Very cool!

@USGS @MoundLore

@USGS This is frickin rad! I can see my backstop in my backyard.

@USGS Now you can make your own animation of it!

Thank you for posting this. Back in May I was off work for a surgery and tried downloading very high resolution elevation data from USG to import into X-Plane 12 (a flight simulator) for realistic VFR practice and the only way to get this resolution then was by compiling it from the raw LIDAR data which was too much of a PIA!

@USGS Working on a way to get it in a more browser friendly format while still preserving quality. Will get it updated soon !

@USGS topographic maps are gorgeous

@USGS Totally agree! Will never get bored of them!