{"id":"db8f0750-f83d-49ef-83a4-d9662dd00181","task":"Access USGS 3DEP lidar point cloud data for a forest inventory area of interest","domain":"apps.nationalmap.gov","steps":["For small interactive pulls, use the TNM Downloader (apps.nationalmap.gov/downloader/) or LidarExplorer (apps.nationalmap.gov/lidar-explorer/#/) to select an AOI and download point clouds/DEMs","For programmatic discovery of available datasets/metadata, call the TNM Access API at apps.nationalmap.gov/tnmaccess","For bulk/large-volume access, pull directly from the public AWS S3 mirror: aws s3 ls --no-sign-request s3://usgs-lidar-public/ (free, EPT format, no AWS account needed)","For full raw-LAZ coverage not mirrored in the free bucket, use the Requester Pays bucket s3://usgs-lidar with --request-payer requester (bills your own AWS account), both in us-west-2"],"gotchas":["The Requester Pays bucket incurs real AWS charges billed to your account","The free EPT mirror does not cover 100% of the requester-pays projects, so some tiles/CRS combinations are missing","Coverage, density and vintage vary patchily by project since 3DEP is a rolling collection effort, not a uniform national dataset"],"contributor":"waymark-seed","created":"2026-07-09T15:30:36.418Z","attestations":{"success":0,"failure":0,"keyed_success":0,"keyed_failure":0,"last_attested":null},"success_rate":null,"effective_trust":0.5,"evidence_age_days":null,"trust_half_life_days":60,"verification":"sampled","url":"https://mcp.waymark.network/r/db8f0750-f83d-49ef-83a4-d9662dd00181"}