What's new in the SDP: Release 7 brings thermal and canopy-structure mapping to Gothic

The Spatial Data Platform’s seventh data release is now live, growing the catalog to 177 cloud-optimized products. Release 7 (R7D001–R7D013) focuses on the Gothic Townsite, where four seasons of uncrewed-aircraft campaigns (2022–2025) now resolve the thermal environment and vegetation structure of the townsite at unprecedented detail.

Land surface temperature at 25 cm. Six new products distill the thermal campaign into analysis-ready layers: mean growing-season surface temperature over three seasonal windows (June–September, April–October, and March–November), a mid-day monthly temperature climatology, principal components summarizing the dominant modes of seasonal thermal variation, and the full weekly time series itself — 113 individual acquisitions from March 2022 through November 2025. If you study frost exposure, warm microsites, or how microclimate shapes phenology and species performance, these layers map that variation plant-by-plant.

Surface and canopy structure at 5 cm. A new bare-earth digital elevation model from the 2021 flights (R7D007) anchors the series, with yearly digital surface models (2022–2025) and a family of canopy-height products on top: yearly heights at 5 cm and 25 cm, and multi-year maximum and minimum canopy height composites spanning 2021–2026 — a foundation for tracking vegetation change through time.

The new products are ready to use from R and Python right now:

library(rSDP)
cat7 <- sdp_get_catalog(releases = "Release7")
lst <- sdp_get_raster("R7D003")   # June–September mean LST

The weekly time series is irregular, so sdp_get_dates("R7D006") (or pysdp.get_dates) lists the exact acquisition dates, online or off.

One housekeeping note: the 2021-era Gothic Townsite DEM (R6D004) is superseded by the new bare-earth DEM (R7D007). The old product remains available, but rSDP and pySDP will point you to the replacement, and the STAC catalog carries the version links.

Spot something off in the new layers? sdp_report_issue("R7D006") opens a prefilled report — it takes a minute, and it makes the data better for everyone.