1

All I want to do is get accurate elevation data, so that I can compare short but very steep hills to pedal up on bicycle.

I start here and see this 2018 DEM:

Lidar-Topo 2018 PA Luzerne County Lidar

Point Spacing: 0.35 m

Alternate Name: USGS: PA_LuzerneCounty_2018

COAST-NOAA at -75.8924, 41.2489

I don't see any JSON file that I can download and manually query to get point elevation. Maybe that is linked in the metadata.

So maybe I need to download a viewer. I tried ArcGISExplorer, but Win10 won't even try to install that. I tried Manifold but that doesn't help, it needs map files.

ArcGIS online viewer only seems to give a shaded map: https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?featurecollection=https%3A%2F%2Fimagery.pasda.psu.edu%2Farcgis%2Frest%2Fservices%2Fpasda%2FUSGS_Luzerne_DEM_2018%2FMapServer%3Ff%3Djson%26option%3Dfootprints&supportsProjection=true&supportsJSONP=true

This next one gives me a 404 not found error (the rockyftp host does not exist) for the viewer or download: https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/usgs-ned-pa-luzerne-county-pa-2019-1ft

Finally, https://maps.equatorstudios.com/ is a nice online interface, but it only seems to use low-res 2006 data, which also has some major flaws.

(The county website is no help. Penn State shows a dark, opaque shaded overlay: https://maps.psiee.psu.edu/preview/map.ashx?layer=1821 with no elevation data.)

How do I view the 2018 dataset in 2D, or at least query it by co-ordinates?

======edited as per BERA's comment===========

At the COAST-NOOA link posted above, in the upper right is a click-to-download, which gives the popup:

Download all United States Interagency Elevation Inventory topographic, topobathy, and bathymetric lidar, and IfSAR data set footprints and attribute information in Esri gdb and Open Geospatial Consortium GeoPackage formats. Download Esri Geodatabase (estimated 52 MB) Download OGC GeoPackage (estimated 173 MB)

I had downloaded the gdb zip yesterday, which contains a large number of various files (atx, indexes and so on).

Can I just drag all those files onto QGIS, as discussed--> Installing File Geodatabase (*.gdb) support in QGIS

Bob White
  • 11
  • 2
  • Can you add a link to the site where the 0.35 DEM can be downloaded? I would be surprised if you cant use QGIS to see and query the DEM – BERA May 24 '22 at 18:04
  • Ty, @BERA. I edited my post. Would you suggest the gdb or ogc? – Bob White May 24 '22 at 18:41
  • @Bob White, for serious Luzerne County elevation data, try https://www.pasda.psu.edu/download/usgs/Luzerne_County_WVSA_LiDAR2017/Bare_Earth_1ft_DEM/ or https://www.pasda.psu.edu/download/usgs/Luzerne_County_WVSA_LiDAR2017/Bare_Earth_1m_DEM/ – Pointdump May 25 '22 at 07:10
  • Thanks @Pointdump. I did have the data, but don't know how to search or interpret it. – Bob White Jul 05 '22 at 23:03

0 Answers0