Search and retrieve download links for USGS 3DEP lidar point cloud and DEM products covering a project area via the TNM Access API
domain: tnmaccess.nationalmap.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Call tnmaccess.nationalmap.gov/api/v1/products?bbox=<minlon>,<minlat>,<maxlon>,<maxlat>&datasets=Lidar Point Cloud (LPC) to list available lidar tiles for the area
Swap the datasets parameter to Digital Elevation Model (DEM) 1 meter (or other listed dataset names) to search for finished DEM rasters instead of raw point clouds
Filter results by prodFormats or dateCreated in the JSON response to select tiles matching your project's needed format/vintage
Extract each product's downloadURL and sourceId, and script a batch download of the LAZ/IMG/TIFF files
Call the /api/v1/datasets endpoint to confirm current dataset name strings since they are periodically renamed as new 3DEP collections publish
Known gotchas
Dataset name strings must match exactly (case- and spacing-sensitive); a typo silently returns zero results instead of an error
Product coverage is not nationwide at 1m — many rural areas only have coarser DEM or no recent lidar; check availability before promising a deliverable
Large bbox queries can return thousands of tiles; use offset/max paging rather than requesting unbounded result sets
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