USGS recommends seven lidar partnerships to refresh public elevation data

USGS has recommended seven projects across seven states for FY26 lidar partnership awards. The expected additions include updated surveys of previously mapped areas, with several projects specifying Quality Level 1 collection.

Older elevation surveys can miss changes from construction, flooding, erosion and wildfire. Updated public-domain data would give infrastructure planners and land managers a more current basis for change detection, planning and environmental monitoring.

USGS’s FY26 3DEP Data Collaboration Announcement identifies seven projects recommended for lidar partnership awards—not completed acquisitions. Together, they are expected to add more than 45,000 square miles of public-domain lidar and derived elevation products. The published descriptions show a focus on refreshing older surveys where development or landscape change has reduced their usefulness. In Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough, collections would update areas last surveyed in 2011 and 2019. Southeast Michigan plans to compare new data with its 2017 collection to support change detection and infrastructure planning. Other described projects address ecological monitoring in Missouri, elevation updates in New York and the first year of Tennessee’s planned four-year QL1 recollection. The practical signal is investment in repeat elevation measurement; operational benefits depend on acquisition and delivery of the planned datasets.

Evidence supplied by USGS.