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FABDEM — available datasets#

The fabdem backend ships a single curated product — there is no dataset= to choose. It is a static global bare-earth elevation grid served as 10°×10° bundle zips of 1° Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF tiles.

Product Version Native resolution Band Units CRS Licence
FABDEM (Forest And Buildings removed Copernicus DEM) V1-2 ~30 m (1 arc-second) elevation metres EPSG:4326 CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

Coverage & packaging#

  • Global land, tiled into 1°×1° cells; ocean-only cells and 10° bundles are not published (the backend skips them).
  • Delivered from the University of Bristol data repository as <SW>-<NE>_FABDEM_V1-2.zip 10° bundles (e.g. N50E000-N60E010_FABDEM_V1-2.zip), each holding <SW>_FABDEM_V1-2.tif 1° tiles (e.g. N50E000_FABDEM_V1-2.tif).

Listing the product programmatically#

from earthlens.fabdem import Catalog

catalog = Catalog()
list(catalog.datasets)          # ['fabdem']
row = catalog.get("fabdem")
row.band, row.version, row.units    # ('elevation', 'V1-2', 'm')
catalog.license_id              # 'CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0'

Licence & attribution#

FABDEM V1-2 is CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 (non-commercial); download() emits a LicenseWarning. Commercial licensing is via Fathom. Cite Hawker et al. (2022), A 30 m global map of elevation with forests and buildings removed, Environmental Research Letters 17, 024016.

  • For the Copernicus surface DEM (GLO-30 / GLO-90, includes canopy and buildings) use the dem backend.
  • For land-and-ocean relief use the bathymetry backend.