Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) High resolution laser ranging of Earth’s forests and topography from the International Space Station (ISS)

GEDI makes precise measurements of forest canopy height, canopy vertical structure, and surface elevation. GEDI radically improves our ability to understand important atmospheric and water cycling processes, biodiversity, and habitat.

GEDI data products are designed to answer key science questions on the role of ecosystem structure now and in the future.

GEDI is a full-waveform lidar instrument that makes detailed measurements of the 3D structure of the Earth’s surface. Lidar is an active remote sensing technology (the laser version of radar) which uses pulses of laser light to measure 3D structure.

GEDI launched on SpaceX-16 on December 5th, 2018, from Cape Canaveral. GEDI was then extracted from the Dragon capsule’s trunk by the ISS’s robotic arms and passed along the length of the space station to the Japanese Experiment Module – Exposed Facility (JEM-EF), where it was attached to power, coolant and communications systems.

Webinar: Explore NASA GEDI Aboveground Biomass Datasets, Services, and Tools at ORNL DAAC

GEDI data products are available at different resolutions and time intervals. Data latency times (that is the time lag between when data are acquired and when a particular product is available) are given below. The data latency depends on the level of the data product.

GEDI: A New LiDAR Altimetry to Obtain the Water Levels of More Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.

GEDI provides the observations needed to characterize how forest structure varies across major forest regions, climatic gradients, and disturbance intensities, thereby improving our understanding of how these factors interact to influence patterns of …

GEDI advances applications in a number of domains including water resource management, weather prediction, forest management, and geomorphometry. Precise height measurements of surface water, ice, vegetation, and the land surface can improve estimates of flood risk from storms, fresh-water supplies, forest resources, and can help identify ...