DEM
Back to Data Sources
Here I call out DEM sources in a broad form, but I give explicit callouts to the 3D elevation products and 3D hydrography products.
Elevation is a critical control on the landscape, and there are innumerable and constantly evolving sources and products of elevations. I focus here on the publicly accessible and license friendly datasets and my concern in outlining these is with a focus on full coverage of continental scale domains, which ends up excluding many products.
One of the greatest disservices elevation datasets do is obfuscate the source metrology and measurement source from the model product, which makes the communication and access patterns difficult to detangle. To attempt to simplify this, I defer to the authorities and lean on their provided language when outlining these.
3DEP
Note that the 3D elevation products and 3D hydrography products are distinct outputs, although both stem from point cloud measurements.
3DEP derived products
Despite the lack of measurements underlying the entirety of the domain, the USGS provides an OCONUS 1 meter DEM that does cover the full geography including areas that are missing LIDAR.
It’s worth calling out the seamless 1 meter DEM (S1M) currently under development, but critical to caveat that this has sparse national coverage and would be is unsuitable for deployment at this point, with coverage only over the North Eastern region of CONUS (see image footprints at: https://apps.nationalmap.gov/downloader/)
Copernicus
“a Digital Surface Model (DSM) of the Earth including buildings, infrastructure and vegetation acquired through the TanDEM-X mission between 2011 and 2015.”
https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/explore-data/data-collections/copernicus-contributing-missions/collections-description/COP-DEM
Coverage
The 10 meter product 
The 30 and 90 meter products
GEDTM
From https://codeberg.org/openlandmap/GEDTM30:
GEDTM30 is a Global 1-arc-second (~30m) Digital Terrain Model (DTM) built using a machine-learning-based data fusion approach. This dataset was generated using a global-to-local random forest model trained on ICEsat-2 and GEDI data, leveraging almost 30 billion of the highest-quality elevation points.
Other sources
Universal
- The USGS 3DEP 1/3 arc-second (~10 meter) DEM provides coverage for all major and minor domains of primary interest.
CONUS:
- Many areas have open COPC LIDAR data, but do not yet possess full domain coverage (see: https://usgs.entwine.io/ for footprint coverage).
Alaska:
- 2 meter seamless ArcticDEM is cataloged at https://registry.opendata.aws/pgc-arcticdem/, providing a (domain-wide) baseline.
Hawaii:
- Has significant coverage of open COPC LIDAR, but is missing Kauai, Puuwai, and portions of the Island of Hawai’i
- A 10 meter DEM for the main 8 Hawaiian Islands is available from https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/38724
Puerto Rico:
- Puerto Rico has domain wide coverage via 2 primary COPC LIDAR datasets collected in 2015 and 2016, and several others from 2018, providing a (domain-wide) dense point cloud coverage.