Preliminary Digital Elevation Models for Palisades Fire, CA 2025

Following the devastating Los Angeles, California wildfires in January 2025, AlertCalifornia sponsored NV5 to acquire high-resolution airborne lidar data for the Palisades and Eaton impact areas. Through its partnership with University of California San Diego (UCSD), NV5 donated the interim data via the USGS to make them publicly available for use by the emergency response community and others. This dataset contains preliminary digital elevation model data for response and recovery as part of the Palisades wildfire in California. Lidar was collected and used to create a 0.5 meter raster DTM and DSM. DEMs have not been manually reviewed and should be considered preliminary. The response and recovery for the Palisades wildfire in California called for the planning, acquisition, processing, and derivative products of lidar data to be collected at a nominal pulse spacing (NPS) of 0.25 meters. This data is provisional and was created for the immediate disaster response for the Palisades wildfire. NV5 Inc, UCSD, and USGS make no guarantee or warrantee as to the data's completeness and accuracy, and as a result, anyone using this data is doing so at their sole risk. Lidar was collected in winter 2025, while no snow was on the ground and rivers were at or below normal levels. For more information on this dataset see the NV5 press release

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Last Updated August 15, 2025, 14:33 (UTC)
Created August 15, 2025, 14:33 (UTC)
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harvest_source_title WIFIRE Commons
providers [{"url": "https://www.opentopography.org", "name": "OpenTopography", "roles": ["host"]}, {"url": "https://www.nv5.com/", "name": "NV5", "roles": ["Collector"]}, {"url": "https://www.nv5.com/", "name": "NV5", "roles": ["Funder"]}, {"url": "https://ucsd.edu/", "name": "University of California San Diego", "roles": ["Funder"]}, {"url": "https://www.usgs.gov/", "name": "United States Geological Survey", "roles": ["Partner"]}]
sci:citation ALERTCalifonia, UC San Diego, NV5, United States Geological Survey (2025). Preliminary Digital Elevation Models for Palisades Fire, CA 2025. Collected by NV5. Distributed by OpenTopography. https://doi.org/10.5069/G9DR2SPG. Accessed <YYYY-MM-DD>
sci:doi https://doi.org/10.5069/G9DR2SPG
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