Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

This site is currently in beta, and your feedback is helping shape its ongoing development.

Topographic change in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore between 1955 and 2015

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2022-07-28T00:00:00Z
This raster dataset describes terrain changes that occurred between 1955 and 2015 in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The DoD values may be used to highlight landslide-prone areas and sand dune movements, as well as to identify other topographic changes caused by anthropogenic activities. The value of each 1 square meter gridcell in this raster indicates the elevation change that occurred in SBDNL between 1955 and 2015. The 1955 DEM was produced from historical aerial imagery acquired on April 1, 1955 at a flying height of 8,500 ft (1:17,000). Structure from motion (SfM) analysis of this imagery produced a 0.88 m DEM, which was edited and resampled to 1 m to match the 1m DEM produced from the 2015 lidar data. This raster dataset is the DEM of Difference (DoD) produced by subtracting the 1955 DEM from the 2015 DEM; positive values indicate an increase in terrain height and negative values indicate a decrease in terrain height. Error analysis of the 1955 and 2015 DEMs indicates that values between -1.25 and 1.25 may be more indicative of error in the DEMs than in measured topographic change.

data.gov

An official website of the GSA's Technology Transformation Services

Looking for U.S. government information and services?
Visit USA.gov