New Version of the ASTER GDEM

Version 3 of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) is now available from NASA’s Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC). The ASTER GDEM covers land surfaces between 83°N and 83°S, and was produced through automated processing of 2.3 million scenes from the ASTER archive.

The first ASTER GDEM was released in 2009, with Version 2 being released in 2011. The ASTER GDEM Version 3 maintains the GeoTIFF format and the same gridding and tile structure as in previous versions, with 30-meter spatial resolution and 1°x1° tiles.

Version 3 also features a new global product: the ASTER Water Body Dataset (ASTWBD). This raster product identifies all water bodies as either ocean, river, or lake, and each GDEM tile has a corresponding Water Body tile.

ASTER GDEM and ASTWBD tiles may be downloaded directly from NASA’s LP DAAC Data Pool. In addition, the data are available with transformation services via the LP DAAC’s Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AρρEEARS).

ASTER is one of five instruments aboard NASA’s Terra spacecraft (launched in 1999) and was built in Japan for the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI). A joint U.S./Japan Science Team is responsible for instrument design, calibration, and data validation.

Read more about the new version of the ASTER GDEM at NASA’s LP DAAC.