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How to Download High Resolution Lidar DEMs
Sep 23, 2025
Download high-resolution, lidar DEMs from the USGS. 1-meter DEMs are available for most of the United States and can easily be downloaded from the USGS. This tutorial will demonstrate how to download high-resolution topography. Check out my website for more: https://opensourceoptions.com
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0:00
Hi folks, welcome to open source
0:03
options. I want to show you how you can
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download highresolution dems, high
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resolution topography directly from the
0:10
internet for free. It's super simple to
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do. We're going to focus on the United
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States and we're going to just go and
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search for USGS LAR Explorer.
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And when that pulls up, we can go to the
0:25
USGS LAR Explorer map or the web page.
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Either one of us will get us there
0:30
eventually. But if I go to the map here,
0:33
it pulls up this area where I can find
0:36
LAR and LAR derived digital elevation
0:40
models or DEMs. Now, when we get to this
0:43
LAR explorer, we have some options here.
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We can take a look and show where LAR is
0:48
available. Um, we can show the legend
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and we can see some different types of
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LAR that are available from quality
0:57
level one. uh quality level zero down to
1:00
quality level three,
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whatever we have there. Now, we could
1:05
download LAR data here, and I'll show
1:06
you how to do that in a future video. Uh
1:09
but I want to start by showing you how
1:10
to download what you're probably really
1:12
after, which is the LAR derived digital
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elevation models. So, we can show where
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those elevation models exist.
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And we can see where we have these 1
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meter elevation models, which are quite
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high resolution topography. So, let's go
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ahead and zoom in on an area where we
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can find some elevation data. I'm going
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to come down here. Um,
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let's just, uh, zoom in on an area over
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here
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on the north side of the Uenta
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mountains.
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Let's come take a look at this here.
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And now we have this location and we
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want to find some data for this
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location. We can see that everything
1:57
here has 1 meter DEM coverage. And now
2:00
you want to go ahead and try to download
2:03
something. Now the way we can do this is
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we're going to click on this uh the
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hamburger menu over here and it says we
2:12
can draw an area of interest by holding
2:14
the control key down while dragging a
2:17
box or we can use the AOI widget. Um I
2:22
don't see the AOI widget up there
2:23
actually. Oh, it's over here. Or we can
2:25
use this widget over here. So we can
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click on this and now
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we can come in and
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draw.
2:37
Oops. Click and drag and draw an area.
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We'll kind of focus on this Henry's Fort
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Creek.
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And so we've got that here. Now we can
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see these LAR projects from which these
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are derived. And we can take a look at
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the DEMs within our area of interest.
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You can see we have a 10 meter and we
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have the one meter dems and 30 meter and
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um sources. Let's get a list. Oops, I
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don't want to download the list. I want
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to see the list. If we click here, we'll
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be able to see
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these different dems that are there and
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then we can start to download them.
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Now, it's not showing which ones are on
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the southern end here, which is strange.
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Usually, it highlights pretty well where
3:24
those are. Um, let's just start by
3:28
downloading one of these. And I'm just
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going to come in and download.
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I'm going to show me. It usually shows
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exactly which one you're hovered over,
3:38
but it's not doing that. We'll just come
3:39
and download this first one. And we'll
3:42
click download. And you can see here
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it's going to download that TIFF that
3:46
file directly. I'm just going to make a
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new folder here and I'm going to call
3:51
this USGS
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uh 3DM
3:56
and we'll click here and we'll save this
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there. Okay, so that's saved. It's saved
4:02
quite quickly actually. Now let's go
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ahead and open up QGIS so we can
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visualize
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this elevation model that we just
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downloaded. This will take just a second
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to open. So I'll pause while I get that
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open.
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So, I've got QGIS open, but I'm actually
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want to download one more of these just
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so we can see what what happens here.
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Let's download this. Um, and so we can
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have a couple of these to work with in
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the future. Now, I'll pull QGIS over.
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I'm just going to make a blank new
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project. We'll go to our browser. My
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data are in downloads
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and
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it's in the USGS
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3D folder here. here that I created. So,
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we'll open that up.
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And you can see we have two of these.
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Let's just add them both to the map.
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And we get this transformation. We'll
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just say okay to this. And there we can
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see we have those DEMs. And they
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uh good thing we downloaded two. This
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first one, the second one is just a very
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small sliver there. So, I'm actually
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going to uh get rid of this
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and just turn this one on. And there you
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can see we have this very high
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resolution data that we now have the
5:23
option to work with in QGIS. Now, if I
5:26
wanted to get this for the whole study
5:27
area, I can come back over to the LAR
5:31
explorer and um
5:36
download these other DEMs. It seems
5:38
strange to me that we don't have
5:41
uh
5:42
everything here, especially when it
5:45
shows it should be available.
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But let's just give this a try and see
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what happens.
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So maybe we'll point out some
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uh results.
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We can see if we preview, we can see all
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of those.
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But let's go just take a look at QGIS
6:08
again. We'll remove this and just add
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all these back in.
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And so you can see here we have five
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DEMs. Now let's pull them all in. And
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there's the area of interest, but
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doesn't go quite as far south as we
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would like. So you can see there may be
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some issues with pulling data off of the
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website. Uh but at the same time, we can
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get a lot of data this way. Uh so
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there's your tutorial on downloading
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those highresolution data sets. Stay
6:38
tuned and I'll show you how we can do
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some more analysis with these data sets
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and create some useful products from
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them. And be sure to check out
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opensource options.com uh for additional
6:50
tutorials and free courses.