Elevation Data Sources

Elevation datasets come in many forms, formats, and from many sources. The most accurate and useful elevation data for locations in North Carolina are lidar-based products discussed in the separate section below.

If you are just looking to add shaded relief as a basemap, try using:

North Carolina 20 foot DEM

LIDAR Based Elevation Data for North Carolina

Following Hurricane Floyd's flood damage in 1999, North Carolina embarked on a joint effort with FEMA to re-map the state's flood zones, and was the first state in the US to obtain statewide lidar data for generating highly accurate Digital Elevation Models (DEMs).  

  • The first lidar data capture occurred during 2001-2005, with a specification of about 1 point about every 3-5 square meters - which is approximately Quality Level 3 (QL3).  This data collection is now referred to as North Carolina's Legacy lidar dataset.
  • The second data capture occurred 2014-2017, and is QL1 (8 points per square meter) and QL2 (2 ppsm).  

Learn much more about North Carolina's lidar data program and available datasets.

Sources for lidar, DEMs, and other elevation data products, derived from the NC statewide lidar data

NC Spatial Data Downloads (requires sign-in using a verified email address) 
Download DEMs generated from the latest QL1 and QL2 lidar data by tiles and at varying cell sizes; and NC County DEM mosaics*.  Also provides lidar mass point tiles, flood hazard data, and building footprints. 

* County DEM mosaics from NC SDD have tile edges that extend past the county boundaries for full county coverage.  County mosaics from NC OneMap align more closely with the county boundaries, but there are some coverage gaps.

NC OneMap
One-foot contour lines by county, found on the homepage by going to Direct Data Downloads, and select Contours in the first dropdown list. Also statewide hillshade, aspect, and shaded elevation imagery services are provided by NC OneMap. 

NC State Libraries has a statewide 20 ft. DEM (pictured above), derived from the legacy lidar data that may be downloaded.  

Specifications:

  • DEM resolution (cell size) is 20-feet with non-rounded/floating-point values.
  • The zip file, named nc_20ft_grid.zip, is 11.9 GB.  Uncompressed size is 28.4 GB.
  • This raster works well for statewide DEM visualization and analysis.
  • Coordinate system is NC Stateplane, NAD 83, feet, and elevation values are in feet.
  • Special thanks to Doug Newcomb with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for providing this DEM in 2013.
  • An older NC DEM from USGS is also available: 3 arc-second, or approx. 90m / 300 ft. cell size, derived from 1:250,000 scale topographic maps.  Zip file size is 9.2 MB.  

Miscellaneous

Vector Contour Lines
Many counties maintain their own contour data, so if you need contours for a small area, check the county open data websites.

NOAA Coastal Service Center, Digital Coast
Lidar data for the Outer Banks and most of the US coastline may be downloaded from the NOAA Digital Coast website. These data were collected separately than statewide projects, and have varying specifications and dates since the mid-90's through the present.

NC State University Campus Elevation Data
See the NC State University Campus GIS Data webpage for lidar data derivatives.

A LIDAR workshop was hosted by NC State University on August 4, 2004, and it's website has presentations and links to LIDAR data activity in NC that were relevant at that time.

US, International Raster/Grid Sources

US NED data

A valuable online (publicly available) source of raster-based or grid elevation data for locations outside of North Carolina is the USGS National Map. It has the following elevation data products available at US and International extents:

  • National Elevation Dataset (NED) - Regularly updated composite of the latest DEM data for the US, and represents the most current and highest resolution DEM data available that USGS has produced, including data from the 3D Elevation Program.
  • 3D Elevation Program - Mission is to respond to growing needs for current high-quality topographic data and three-dimensional (3D) representations of the Nation's natural and constructed features.
  • DEM Discovery Portal - Search by location for DEMs.
  • Open Topography - Crowd-submitted sources for high-resolution topography data and tools.
  • Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) - 99% global coverage, 30 meter resolution.
  • Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) - 80% global coverage, 30 and 90 meter resolution.
  • ETOPO1 - 1 arc-minute (approx. 2 km) global relief model of the Earth, includes land topography and ocean bathymetry. Also two versions - an "ice surface" version has the Greenland and Antartic ice sheets, and a "Bedrock" version has the underlying terrain.
  • GTOPO30 - Global Digital Elevation Model with a horizontal grid spacing of 30 arc seconds (approximately 1 kilometer).
  • The USGS also provides Web Map Service (WMS) links for Elevation data.

Many of these national and global data products are also accessible from ArcGIS Online.

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