Getting and preparing USGS terrain using the free QGIS software
Channel: Tom Haws
Date: 17/08/2023

USGS has Digital Elevation Model GeoTIFF rasters as recent as 2020 with as small as 4 inch absolute vertical accuracy on smaller than a 1m resolution in some locations. QGIS is Free and Open Source Software. This video shows all the steps for a GIS newcomer to download, reproject, clip, and convert to feet a GeoTIFF with QGIS for use in Civil 3D, HEC-RAS, etc.

0:00 Intro
0:13 USGS The National Map Download product choices
0:59 Downloading a GeoTIFF
1:27 QGIS New Project
1:55 Leave at WGS84 for now
2:07 Add a background map (USGSTopo) ArcGIS REST Server connection and Layer
3:24 Zoom in and set project CRS
3:41 On-the-fly transformation
3:49 Add GeoTIFF Raster layer
4:07 Warp (Reproject) the GeoTIFF raster 
5:43 Clip the GeoTIFF raster to view extents
6:13 Calculate the conversion from meters to feet
7:41 Show as contours
8:13 Check using USGSTopo
8:55 Check again using a survey point
9:48 Metadata: resolution and date
11:17 Comparing 1m, ORP, and Lidar
13:02 Comparing rendering Nearest Neighbor vs. Bilinear vs. Cubic