---
tags:
- earth
- geospatial
- gis
size_categories:
- 10K<n<100K
license: other
license_name: non-commercial-government-licence-v2
license_link: https://huggingface.co/datasets/links-ads/fabdem-v12/blob/main/license.txt
---

# FABDEM v1.2 STAC Catalog

> **The rasters have moved.** This repository now holds the STAC metadata only.
> The GeoTIFFs live in the public bucket
> [`links-ads/fabdem`](https://huggingface.co/buckets/links-ads/fabdem), and every
> STAC item here points at them, so nothing changes for STAC clients. What does
> change: `hf download links-ads/fabdem-v12` no longer gives you the tiles — see
> [Accessing the data](#accessing-the-data).

FABDEM (Forest And Buildings removed Copernicus DEM) is a global 30 m elevation
dataset derived from Copernicus GLO-30, with forest and building height biases
systematically removed by the University of Bristol. It represents bare-earth
topography, which matters for hydrological modelling, flood risk, and any
application where vegetation and built structures corrupt the terrain signal.

## Dataset summary

| | |
|---|---|
| Resolution | 30 m (~1 arcsecond) |
| Coverage | Global, 19,011 tiles of ~1° × 1° |
| Format | Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF, 3600 × 3600 px |
| Compression | DEFLATE, predictor 2, 512 × 512 internal tiles |
| Overviews | levels 2/4/8, average resampling |
| Data type | float32 elevation in metres, nodata −9999 |
| CRS | WGS84 (EPSG:4326) |
| Version | 1.2 |
| Total size | 438 GiB |

The tiles were rewritten from the University of Bristol distribution into valid
COGs with internal overview pyramids. **Pixel values are unchanged** — the rewrite
touched only the container, so low-zoom and windowed reads no longer require
pulling whole files.

## Structure

```
catalog.json                   root catalog -> collection.json
collection.json                collection "fabdem", 19011 item links
stac_catalog/<id>/<id>.json    one STAC item per tile
```

Item links hang off the **collection**, not the catalog, so a client walking
`rel: item` links must read `collection.json`.

Links inside the catalog are relative, which makes this tree a *relative published
catalog*: the identical documents are also published in the bucket at
<https://huggingface.co/buckets/links-ads/fabdem/resolve/>. Use whichever you
prefer — this repo's CDN is faster for small documents, the bucket has no per-IP
rate ceiling and is the better choice for automated traversal.

## Accessing the data

Assets are plain public HTTPS objects, no authentication, readable by GDAL through
`/vsicurl/`:

```python
import rasterio

url = "https://huggingface.co/buckets/links-ads/fabdem/resolve/tiles/N40E000-N50E010_FABDEM_V1-2/N44E007_FABDEM_V1-2.tif"
with rasterio.open("/vsicurl/" + url) as src:
    print(src.profile["dtype"], src.shape, src.overviews(1))
    preview = src.read(1, out_shape=(1, 450, 450))  # reads an overview, not the full grid
```

`stac_catalog_query.ipynb` in this repo shows the full path: read the collection,
filter tiles by area of interest, load only the matching items, and stack them
with `stackstac`.

## Limitations

- **Temporal snapshot**: represents conditions circa 2020.
- **Processing artifacts**: some remain in complex terrain.
- **Polar regions**: coverage follows Copernicus DEM constraints.

## Licence and attribution

FABDEM v1.2 is distributed under the **Non-Commercial Government Licence v2.0** —
see `license.txt`. Non-commercial use only; keep the licence alongside any
redistribution.

Produced by the University of Bristol
(<https://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/s5hqmjcdj8yo2ibzi9b4ew3sn>), from Copernicus
GLO-30 © ESA. Reprocessed and hosted by Fondazione LINKS — AI, Data & Space.

The original STAC cataloguing approach was inspired by
<https://github.com/cordmaur/fabdem-brazil-south>.

## Citation

Hawker, L., Uhe, P., Paulo, L., Sosa, J., Savage, J., Sampson, C., and Neal, J.
(2022). "A 30 m Global Map of Elevation with Forests and Buildings Removed."
*Environmental Research Letters* 17(2), 024016.
<https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4d4f>