CONUS Canopy Height Model

Description¶

The NAIP-CHM is a high-resolution canopy height model (CHM) covering the contiguous United States (CONUS). Functionally acting as a normalized Digital Surface Model (nDSM), the dataset characterizes the full vertical structure of the landscape—including vegetation, buildings, and infrastructure—rather than masking human-made features.

The dataset was generated using a U-Net convolutional neural network with attention mechanisms (CBAM) and environmental conditioning (FiLM), trained on over 18 million lidar-derived training pairs. It primarily utilizes National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery from 2012–2023 (96% from 2022–2023).

Organization¶

University of Montana

Website¶

https://naip-chm.projects.earthengine.app/view/naip-chm-a-conus-structure-model

Google Earth Engine¶

projects/naip-chm/assets/conus-structure-model

Spatial Resolution¶

0.6m

Time Span¶

2022-2024 (composite)

Variables¶

canopy height (m)

Terms of Use¶

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

References¶

Morford, S. L., Allred, B. W., Coons, S. P., Marcozzi, A. A., McCord, S. E., Smith, J. T., & Naugle, D. E. (2025). A 0.6-meter resolution canopy height model for the contiguous United States. bioRvix. https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.12.694075