Terrain Elevation

Downloads US terrain elevation from the USGS in 1/3rd arc-second resolution.

An easy-to-use MATLAB library for working with terrain elevation from the USGS in 1/3rd arc-second resolution. Supports automatic download and synthesization of multiple 1x1 degree cells, elevation data sampling, easy conversion from latitude/longitude to cartesian coordinates, and terrain visualization.

This library works in all of the mainland United States, Hawaii, and most of Alaska. It depends on the MATLAB Mapping Toolbox.

Example code:

% Download the USGS 1/3 arc-second data covering northwestern Wyoming, from
% 42.5 to 45 latitude and from -111.05 to -108.6 longitude
region = fetchregion([42.5, 45], [-111.05, -108.6], 'display', true);
% Read the elevation data for Yellowstone National Park (the indicated
% latitude and longitude range), sampling at 1/5th of the maximum
% resolution (i.e., 5 arc-seconds).
yellowstoneElevData = region.readelevation([44.255813, 44.649888], [-110.861772, -110.183366], 'sampleFactor', 5, 'display', true);
% Graph the elevation data for Yellowstone, using latitude and longitude
% for the x and y coordinates
dispelev(yellowstoneElevData, 'mode', 'latlong');
% Read the elevation data for the Jackson Hole resort (the indicated
% latitude and longitude range), sampling all data points (1 arc-second resolution)
jacksonElevData = region.readelevation([43.450467, 43.546597], [-110.837225, -110.732854], 'SampleFactor', 1, 'display', true);
% Graph the elevation data for Jackson Hole, using meters for the x and y
% coordinates and specifying roughly 50 grid lines
dispelev(jacksonElevData, 'mode', 'cartesian', 'gridLines', 50);