Automating County-Level DEM Downloads and Merging with Model Builder

[anna_7]

Hello Esri Community,

I’m currently working on downloading and merging 1-meter DEMs for multiple counties in Illinois using the USGS DEM Getter (Get DEMs in Bounding Box tool) and used geographic coordinate system WGS 1984. For a single county, I set the following parameters:

• Bounding Box Extent: Adjusted to match the extent of the county boundary (e.g., Cook County).
• Data Type: GeoTIFF.
• Environment Settings:
  • Processing Extent: Set to the county layer extent.
  • Parallel Processing: 50%.

This approach works well for one county. However, I need to automate the process for all counties in Illinois. My goal is to use ModelBuilder to:

1. Loop through each county boundary.
2. Dynamically set the bounding box extent  and processing extent (environment) for each county.
3. Download  and Merge the DEMs for all counties.

I’m seeking guidance on:

• Best practices for automating this workflow in ModelBuilder.
• Setting up a dynamic loop for county boundaries.
• Ensuring proper merging of DEMs after downloads.

If anyone has experience with similar workflows or advice on using the USGS DEM Getter tool in an automated setting, your input would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!
Anna

Dem getter.png

Enviroment.png