gedih3 is a new open toolkit that makes NASA’s GEDI spaceborne lidar — billions of laser measurements of the world’s forests — into analysis-ready data at any scale.

Since 2019, the GEDI mission — a joint effort between NASA and the University of Maryland aboard the International Space Station — has fired billions of laser pulses through the world’s forests, measuring their three-dimensional structure in unprecedented detail. But that data arrives in complex, orbit-by-orbit files that demand specialized expertise to use.

gedih3 removes that barrier: it transforms GEDI’s raw measurements into a spatially indexed database that any researcher can query by region, filter for quality with a single command, aggregate to any scale, and export to the standard formats used in GIS and remote sensing science — turning terabytes of satellite data into usable maps of forest height, biomass, and any other structural attribute. Built for distributed processing, it scales seamlessly from a single study area to entire continents.

And the best part: It’s freely available for research and non-commercial use! gedih3 puts one of the most important datasets in ecosystem science within reach of scientists, land managers, and policymakers worldwide.

gedih3 was developed by Tiago de Conto — Lead for Machine Learning and Data Analytics for the GEDI Mission at the University of Maryland (UMD).

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