Tool for Navigating GEDI

In this section:

  • A list of options for GEDI data visualization, access, and processing with commentary on requirements and workflow plug-ins.

Several Ways to Directly Access, Process, and Visualize GEDI data

Lidar is notorious for having large file sizes. GEDI is similarly heavy in data amounts, therefore making data cleaning, optimization, or aggregation a crucial step to your workflow. Usually, only a handful of these parameters or datasets will be relevant to your study. Depending on the application, for example, an advanced researcher may be interested in evaluating the waveform itself, re-deriving metrics, or comparing the results from several waveform interpretation algorithms published for each product. While for other contexts, you may only be interested in using the finalized results.

Whichever the case may be, pre-processing and reducing the dataset to the most appropriate metrics, other datasets, and sensor characteristic information will be critical for your choice in access method, computational capacity, and storage limitations. Highlighted in this next section are several methods of accessing the original or derived products, whether to retrieve the original data, or to use the tools to prepare the data for analysis. Options span across interactive webpage tools, Cloud services, local direct access, programming APIs in python and R, and Google Earth Engine. Each of these choices include various degrees of pre-processing and analysis plug-in ease within its workflow.

Reference table comparing the functionality of platforms able to access, download, process, or analyze GEDI data.

  NASA EarthData Search GUI earthaccess Python library TESViS Harmony API SlideRule Earth rGEDI Google Earth Engine gediDB
* = HDF5, ** = GeoTIFF All All L3**, L4A*, L4B** L1B*, L2A*, L2B*, L4A*, L4C* L1B*, L2A*, L4A* L1B*, L2A*, L2B*, L2A, L2B, L4A as vector & monthly rasters. L4B**, Gridded Veg Structure** L1B*, L2A*, L2B*, L4A*, L4C*
Map visualization tool ✔   ✔ (after processing) Depends on the tool ✔ ✔ (code) ✔  
3D visualization tool         ✔ ✔ (3D ALS point clouds)    
GUI ✔   ✔   ✔   ✔  
API   ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔   ✔ ✔ (merge multiple products & formats)
Cloud Data Access ✔ (AWS) ✔ (AWS)   ✔ (AWS) ✔ (AWS)   ✔ (Google) ✔ (AWS)
Spatial Filtering ✔ (overlap, no clip) ✔ ✔ (point only) ✔ (clip and subset) ✔ (clip and subset) ✔ (clip and subset) ✔ (clip and subset) ✔
Temporal Filtering ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Python   ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ NA ✔ ✔
R   NA ✔     Documentation    
Command Line       ✔ ✔      
Tools ORNL DAAC Tools   ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ (customization) ✔ ✔ (customization)

NASA Resources

EarthData Search Python Library: earthaccess


GEDI L2A Elevation and Height Metrics Data Global Footprint Level V002 available in EarthData Search along with filtering and visualization tools.

NASA LP DAAC


Getting Started with GEDI L2A Version2 Data in Python jupyter notebook accessed through github.

NASA ORNL DAAC

  • Terrestrial Ecology Subsetting and Visualization Services (TESViS): Provides subsetting services via a web application and REST API. The goal of the Terrestrial Ecology Subsetting & Visualization Services (TESViS) is to provide summaries of selected data products for the community to use for validation of models and remote-sensing products and to characterize field sites.
    • GEDI Products Available
      • GEDI03: Gridded Land Surface Metrics
      • GEDI04_B: Gridded Above Ground Biomass Density
      • GEDI04_A: Footprint Level Above Ground Biomass Density

  • ORNL DAAC Tools for handling files and converting to other formats
  • Requirements: EarthData account
  • Considerations
    • Only hosts GEDI Level 3 and 4 products and has visualization capabilities as well as data format transformation.

Harmony API

  • Harmony is a powerful data transformation service for accessing cloud based data across NASA data centers. Users can subset data for a geographic region, a temporal range, and by variable. Data can be “reprojected” from its native coordinate reference system (CRS) to the coordinate reference system needed for your analysis. Data can also be reformatted from its native file format to a format that is more relevant to your needs.
  • Tutorials for handling HDF5 files and converting to other formats
  • Requirements: EarthData account
  • Considerations: The API can be customized and it currently only serves the footprint level data. There are major size and area limits when subsetting the GEDI data by beam type or when selecting variables using the Harmony API functions.

SlideRule Earth

  • SlideRule Earth is a collaboration between the University of Washington and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to create an open source framework for on-demand processing of science data in the cloud. SlideRule runs in AWS us-west-2 and has access to ICESat-2, GEDI, Landsat, ArcticDEM, REMA, and a growing list of other datasets stored in S3.
  • Requirements: Interactive webpage tool
  • Considerations: No coding is required, however selected regions must be less than 100sq km.


Viewing GEDI Geolocated waveforms over a section of forest in Guatemala.

Other NASA Data Tools

Google Earth Engine (GEE)

GEDI in the GEE catalog

  • Requirements: Google Earth Engine Account and Cloud Project
  • Considerations: Raster TIFs facilitate easier handling of the data due to monthly aggregation, workflow plug in, and computational and storage capacity. Raster formats are also easier to plug into existing workflows than other GIS software. Cost, and limited accessibility for certain users who are not academic researchers (government, etc.). Table vector products require additional acquisition steps due to the catalog lookup table formatting.

GEDI GEE apps

  • Requirements: Some require a GEE account, others are publicly available web app tools
  • Considerations: In some cases, the user can access the backend code of the apps allowing for customization. With the set public apps, there is limited customization on public tools.

awesome-gee-community-catalog

  • An active community based catalog of tutorials, datasets, workflows, and other resources.

Coding Resources

In addition to the Harmony API:

  • rGEDI is an R package for GEDI data visualization and processing by Carlos Silva et al.
    • The rGEDI package provides functions for i) downloading, ii) visualizing, iii) clipping, iv) gridding, iv) simulating and v) exporting GEDI data.
    • A large portion of the GEDI user community works in R. The growing list of resources in other languages or by other methods enable the translation or integration of R resources, or cross-platform plug-ins so as not to split up EO workflows for non-R users.
  • Earth Observation code library

QGIS & ArcGIS

QGIS is essentially a free and open source version of ESRI ArcGIS. Both platforms are unable to read and handle GEDI’s HDF5 files, though workarounds by the platforms and/or user community may be under development. The hierarchy of the files are too complex for the current versions of the platforms to properly read and extract across the multi-dimensional datasets into a geographic coordinate or projection system. Additionally, when trying to work with the original un-subsetted file with the intention of selecting datasets/variables within Q or Arc, the systems tend to crash due to the large file size. It is recommended to convert the acquired data to an alternative format (and optionally apply proper pre-processing during the conversion elsewhere) that is more compatible with these software.

Knowledge Check #2
Imagine you are mapping annual habitat extents. Choose an acquisition and/or visualization method, and describe its requirements, limitations, and potential workflow plugins for exploring GEDI’s various available vegetation structure and complexity footprint and gridded products.

Free and Open Source Platforms for Processing and Visualizing Other Lidar Data

Many workflows for calibration, validation, assessment, and classification of GEDI data involve incorporating other lidar data. Presented here is a list of platforms that can be used to directly ingest LAS/LAZ lidar files should the user choose to combine lidar data sources.

Curtosy of EarthRISE at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and the Lab for Applied Scienecs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville