LIDAR has been collected for South-Central Nebraska. The project is a collaboration of several partners to obtain 0.7m Ground Sample Distance (GSD) LIDAR for a portion of the Platte River and 1.4m GSD LIDAR for the rest of the study area.

Rainwater Basin Joint Venture, Platte River Recovery Implementation Program, DNR, USGS, Central Platte NRD, Tri-Basin NRD, Lower Republican NRD, Little Blue NRD, Upper Big Blue NRD, Kansas GIS Policy Board, USDA-NRCS Kansas and USDA-NRCS Nebraska worked together and provided funding to make this happen. Significant funding was provided by Nebraska Environmental Trust, Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Conservation Innovation Grant, and Interrelated Water Management Plan Program Fund. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Nebraska Game and Parks Commission made in-kind contributions in the LIDAR of personnel time.

Vertical accuracy was specified to meet a standard of RMSE=18.5cm (Accuracyz=0.36m at 95% confidence level) for the 1.4m GSD area. The vertical accuracy for the 0.7m GSD area was specified to meet a standard of 9.2 cm RMSE (Accuracyz = 0.18m at the 95% confidence level). Points were to be classified in the following classes:

Class 1- Unclassified
Class 2- Ground
Class 7- Low point and noise
Class 9- water
Class 12- overlap

It was collected in leaf-off conditions.

Eventually the LAS format point cloud data will be made available on USGS’s Center for LIDAR Information Coordination and Knowledge (CLICK) website, but meanwhile it can be obtained from DNR. LAS, 1m DEMs and 2m DEMs are available for the main South-Central Nebraska area; the 2m DEMs are available below for download. Only LAS is available for the 0.7m GSD Platte River area.