The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission aims to characterize ecosystem structure and dynamics to enable radically improved quantification and understanding of the Earth’s carbon cycle and biodiversity. The GEDI instrument produces high resolution laser ranging observations of the 3-dimensional structure of the Earth. GEDI is attached to the International Space Station (ISS) and collects data globally between 51.6° N and 51.6° S latitudes at the highest resolution and densest sampling of any light detection and ranging (lidar) instrument in orbit to date. Each GEDI Version 2 granule encompasses one-fourth of an ISS orbit and includes georeferenced metadata to allow for spatial querying and subsetting.
The GEDI instrument was removed from the ISS and placed into storage on March 17, 2023. No data were acquired during the hibernation period from March 17, 2023, to April 24, 2024. GEDI has since been reinstalled on the ISS and resumed operations as of April 26, 2024.
The GEDI Level 1B Geolocated Waveforms product (GEDI01_B) provides geolocated corrected and smoothed waveforms, geolocation parameters, and geophysical corrections for each laser shot for all eight GEDI beams. GEDI01_B data are created by geolocating the GEDI01_A raw waveform data. The GEDI01_B product is provided in HDF5 format and has a spatial resolution (average footprint) of 25 meters.
The GEDI01_B data product contains 87 layers for each of the eight beams including the geolocated corrected and smoothed waveform datasets and parameters and the accompanying ancillary, geolocation, and geophysical correction. Additional information can be found in the GEDI L1B Product Data Dictionary.
Known Issues
- Data acquisition gaps: GEDI data acquisitions were suspended on December 19, 2019 (2019 Day 353) and resumed on January 8, 2020 (2020 Day 8).
- Incorrect Reference Ground Track (RGT) number in the filename for select GEDI files: GEDI Science Data Products for six orbits on August 7, 2020, and November 12, 2021, had the incorrect RGT number in the filename. There is no impact to the science data, but users should reference this document for the correct RGT numbers.
- Known Issues: Section 8 of the User Guide provides additional information on known issues.