NASA's Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) released a new Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) Level 3 (L3) gridded land surface metrics Version 3 data product.
This dataset contains GEDI L3 gridded mean canopy height, standard deviation of canopy height, mean ground elevation, standard deviation of ground elevation, and counts of laser footprints per 1-km x 1-km grid cells globally within -52 and 52 degrees latitude. The dataset covers GEDI footprints from the 19th through the 343rd mission weeks (April 18, 2019 to July 9, 2025). These L3 gridded products were derived from Version 3 of the Level 2 (L2) geolocated laser footprint return profile metrics, which includes improved geolocation, as well as a modified method to predict an optimum algorithm setting group.
GEDI is a full-waveform lidar instrument aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that collects high-resolution laser ranging measurements of Earth’s vertical structure. The instrument uses three lasers to produce eight beam ground transects, sampling ~25 m footprints spaced approximately every 60 m along-track. Beam transects are spaced approximately 600 m apart in the cross-track direction, resulting in an across-track width of ~4.2 km. GEDI’s precise measurements of canopy height, vertical structure, and surface elevation greatly advance our understanding of forest ecosystems, carbon and water cycling, biodiversity, and habitat structure.
The GEDI L3 data files are provided in cloud optimized GeoTIFF format and available through the dataset landing page.
More information on this dataset and others like it can be found on the GEDI project landing page.