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Description
The Terra Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) Version 3 (ASTGTM) provides a global digital elevation model (DEM) of land areas on Earth at a spatial resolution of 1 arc second (approximately 30 meter horizontal posting at the equator).
The development of the ASTER GDEM data products is a collaborative effort between National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI). The ASTER GDEM data products are created by the Sensor Information Laboratory Corporation (SILC) in Tokyo.
The ASTER GDEM Version 3 data product was created from the automated processing of the entire ASTER Level 1A archive of scenes acquired between March 1, 2000, and November 30, 2013. Stereo correlation was used to produce over one million individual scene based ASTER DEMs, to which cloud masking was applied. All cloud screened DEMs and non-cloud screened DEMs were stacked. Residual bad values and outliers were removed. In areas with limited data stacking, several existing reference DEMs were used to supplement ASTER data to correct for residual anomalies. Selected data were averaged to create final pixel values before partitioning the data into 1 degree latitude by 1 degree longitude tiles with a one pixel overlap. To correct elevation values of water body surfaces, the ASTER Global Water Bodies Database (ASTWBD) Version 1 data product was also generated.
The geographic coverage of the ASTER GDEM extends from 83° North to 83° South. Each tile is distributed in both a Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) and NetCDF4 format through NASA Earthdata Search. Data are projected on the 1984 World Geodetic System (WGS84)/1996 Earth Gravitational Model (EGM96) geoid. Each of the 22,912 tiles in the collection contain at least 0.01% land area.
Provided in the ASTER GDEM product are layers for DEM and number of scenes (NUM). The NUM layer indicates the number of scenes that were processed for each pixel and the source of the data.
While the ASTER GDEM Version 3 data products offer substantial improvements over Version 2, users are advised that the products still may contain anomalies and artifacts that will reduce its usability for certain applications.
Known Issues
ASTER GDEM Version 3 tiles overlap by one pixel to the north, south, east, and west of the tile perimeter. In most cases the overlapping edge pixels have identical pixel values, but it is possible that in some instances values will differ.
ASTER GDEM Version 3 is considered to be void free except for Greenland and Antarctica.
Users are reminded that because there are known inaccuracies and artifacts in the dataset, to use the product with awareness of these limitations. The data are provided "as is" and neither NASA nor METI/Earth Resources Satellite Data Analysis Center (ERSDAC) will be responsible for any damages resulting from use of the data.
Version Description
The following changes and improvements were implemented for the ASTER GDEM Version 3 data product: (1) Expansion of temporal coverage to increase cloud free input scenes from 1.5 million to 1.88 million scenes, (2) Separation of rivers from lakes in the water body processing, and (3) Decrease in minimum water body detection size from 1 square kilometer to 0.2 square kilometers.
Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.
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Citation Copied
NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003 [Dataset]. NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003 Date Accessed: 2026-07-21
NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. (2019). ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003 [Dataset]. NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003 Date Accessed: 2026-07-21
NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Spacesystems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. “ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V003.” NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center, 2019, https://doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. Date Accessed: 2026-07-21
File Naming Convention
ASTGTMV003_N10W001_dem.tif
The file name begins with the Product Short Name and Version (ASTGTMV003), followed by the latitude and longitude of the lower-left corner pixel (N10W001), Variable (dem) and Data Format (tif).
Barber, Quinn E., Jain, Piyush, Whitman, Ellen, Thompson, Dan K., Guindon, Luc, Parks, Sean A., Wang, Xianli, Hethcoat, Matthew G., Parisien, Marc-Andre