Texas LiDAR DEM Download Map

How to read the results

Lidar collection

One lidar flight project published by the Texas Geographic Information Office (TxGIO), often with partners such as USGS, counties or river authorities. Several collections can cover one site, flown in different years.

Tile (quarter quad)

TxGIO cuts most collections into USGS quarter-quadrangle tiles, about 4 miles on a side. A few collections (four in November 2026) come as one file per county. The tile names (for example “Austin East|SW”) are TxGIO’s own.

DEM

Digital elevation model: a bare-earth elevation grid made from the lidar ground points, the usual terrain for HEC-RAS and other H&H models. TxGIO ships each tile as one zip holding several GeoTIFF or ERDAS IMG pieces to mosaic in GIS (Bexar & Travis 2021: 16 GeoTIFFs of 2 ft cells for one quarter quad; Bexar 2010: 4 IMG files of 1 m cells), each with an .xml metadata file.

Point cloud, contours and other files

The point cloud (LAZ) holds every lidar return, for making your own surface. Contours (hypsography) are elevation lines. A surface model (DSM) includes trees and buildings; use the DEM (bare earth) for H&H terrain. Some collections add breaklines, building footprints, a tile index and a supplemental report.

Resolution and acquisition date

Shown as TxGIO lists them for the collection. The listed resolution is often the lidar point spacing, and the DEM cells can be larger (Bexar & Travis 2021 lists 28cm/50cm; its DEM cells are 2 ft). The .xml file beside each DEM piece gives that tile’s own flight dates and cell size.

Coordinate system (EPSG)

The projection TxGIO lists for the collection, as EPSG codes with a link to check them. Each DEM file stores its own horizontal and vertical coordinate system — in the GeoTIFF keys or the IMG header, with no separate .prj — and GIS reads it from there. It can differ from the list: Bexar & Travis 2021 lists EPSG 2277 and 2278, while its GeoTIFFs carry EPSG 6588, NAD83(2011) Texas South Central (US feet), with NAVD88 (Geoid18) heights in US feet. Use the file’s.

Download record

Each download link you open is listed with its tile, collection, file name and size, so you can tell later which files you took. It stays in this browser tab and can be saved as a CSV; save it before you close the tab. Links saved with right-click “Save link as” or taken from DEM links (TXT) are not listed.

File list, DEM links and tile index

File list (CSV) names every file shown with its source details and link; DEM links (TXT) has one link per line, grouped by collection, for a browser download manager or extension, or Windows PowerShell (the command is in the file’s header lines); TxGIO’s server refused curl and Python with their default settings (HTTP 403) in November 2026; the tile index (Shapefile or GeoJSON) holds the tile outlines with the same fields. The files are made in your browser; each one states its source.