Default Variables¶

In addition to shot number, acquisition time, and geolocation information, the following variables are extracted by default if no custom variables are provided via the variables parameter (see "Custom Variables" section below).

GEDI L2A¶

Product: GEDI Level 2A (Geolocated Elevation and Height Metrics)

Variable	Description	GEDI Layer Name
`rh98`	Relative height metrics at 98% interval	`rh98`

GEDI L2B¶

Product: GEDI Level 2B (Canopy Cover and Vertical Profile Metrics)

Variable	Description	GEDI Layer Name
`rh100`	Height above ground of received waveform signal start	`rh100`
`tcc`	Total canopy cover	`cover`
`fhd`	Foliage Height Diversity	`fhd_normal`
`pai`	Total Plant Area Index	`pai`

Additional Base Variables (Always Included)¶

Variable	Description	GEDI Layer Name
`shot`	Shot number (unique identifier)	`shot_number`
`acq_time`	Acquisition time	Derived from filename
`latitude`	Latitude of lowest mode	`lat_lowestmode`
`longitude`	Longitude of lowest mode	`lon_lowestmode`
`elev`	Elevation of lowest mode	`elev_lowestmode`
`elev_dem_tdx`	Digital elevation model (TanDEM-X)	`digital_elevation_model`
`sensitivity`	Beam sensitivity	`sensitivity`
`num_detectedmodes`	Number of detected modes	`num_detectedmodes`

Further Information¶

For comprehensive overviews of all available layers in each product:

Custom Variables¶

You can specify custom variables to extract using the variables parameter when calling the extract_data function, or via the --variables option in the CLI.

The variables parameter accepts a list of tuples, where each tuple contains the desired variable name and the corresponding, exact (!) GEDI layer name after the beam prefix.

CLIPython

# Extract custom variables using column_name=layer_name pairs
gedixr extract /path/to/data --product L2A \
  --variables "rh50=rh50,rh75=rh75,solar_azimuth=solar_azimuth,treecover=land_cover_data/landsat_treecover"

from gedixr.extract import extract_data

variables = [
    ('rh50', 'rh50'),
    ('rh75', 'rh75'),
    ('solar_azimuth', 'solar_azimuth'),
    ('treecover', 'land_cover_data/landsat_treecover')
]
gdf, out_path = extract_data(
    directory="/path/to/data",
    gedi_product='L2A',
    variables=variables
)

This will extract the rh50, rh75, solar_azimuth, and landsat_treecover variables in addition to the default base variables. As you can see, for nested variables (like landsat_treecover), you need to provide the full path within the HDF5 structure after the beam prefix (e.g., BEAM0001/land_cover_data/landsat_treecover as it appears in the overview linked above). In the example, the landsat_treecover variable will appear in the output GeoDataFrame with the column name treecover.

Limitations

GEDI L2A and L2B products contain a looot of variables. Not all of them can be directly extracted like this. Particularly, variables that are stored as arrays (e.g., waveform data) are not supported for extraction via the variables parameter at this time. Contributions are welcome! 😊