Digital Elevation Models of Glacier Bay National Park, Between Lituya Bay and Icy Point, Alaska, Derived from Airborne Lidar Data Acquired in September 2015

This dataset provides four digital elevation models derived from airborne lidar data acquired over four separate areas along and adjacent to the Fairweather Fault along the remote Gulf of Alaska coast within Glacier Bay National Park. In 1958, the Fairweather Fault in southeast Alaska ruptured over 260 km between Yakutat Bay and Cross Sound, producing the magnitude 7.8 Lituya Bay earthquake. To better understand the extent of surface rupture and identify sites to investigate for evidence of past earthquakes, the USGS Alaska Science Center collaborated with the National Park Service, the Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), and the National Center for Airborne Lidar Mapping (NCALM) at the University of Houston to collect over 166 square kilometers of high-resolution airborne lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) data. CRREL developed and deployed the Helipod lidar system, designed for use on a Robinson R44 Raven II helicopter, to acquire more than 34.4 million laser measurements. The measurements have vertical and horizontal accuracies of +/-10 cm. NCALM processed the lidar data to remove laser returns from vegetation and enhance laser returns from the ground surface. The derivative “bare-Earth” data include 1.4 to 2.3 laser returns per square meter, which were used to produce 1-m-per-pixel digital elevation models (DEM) for four areas between Lituya Bay and Icy Point.