Global Digital Elevation Model Click Image to Enlarge  (JPG) (1,153,192 bytes) ( 4,320 x 2,160 )

NASA and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced the release of the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) on June 29, 2009. The GDEM was created by stereo-correlating the 1.3 million scene ASTER VNIR archive, covering the Earth’s land surface between 83N and 83S latitudes. The GDEM is produced with 30 meter postings, and is formatted in 23,000 1 x 1 degree tiles as GeoTIFF files. Each GDEM file is accompanied by a Quality Assessment file, either giving the number of ASTER scenes used to calculate a pixel’s value, or indicating the source of external DEM data used to fill the ASTER voids. The GDEM is available for download from NASA’s EOS data archive (https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/~wist/api/imswelcome/) and Japan’s Ground Data System (http://www.gdem.aster.ersdac.or.jp/index.jsp). This ASTER product is available at no charge for any user pursuant to an agreement between METI and NASA.