Historical Record of Landsat Global Coverage: Mission Operations, NSLRSDA, and International Cooperator Stations

 

Samuel Goward, University of Maryland College Park

Terry Arvidson, Lockheed Martin

Darrel Williams, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

John Faundeen, USGS EROS

James Irons, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Shannon Franks, University of Maryland College Park

 

Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, vol. 72, no. 10, pp: 1155–1169.

The long-term, 34+ year record of global Landsat remote sensing data is a critical resource to study the Earth system and human impacts on this system. The National Satellite Land Remote Sensing Data Archive (NSLRSDA) is charged by public law to: “maintain a permanent, comprehensive Government archive of global Landsat and other land remote sensing data for long-term monitoring and study of the changing global environment” (U.S. Congress, 1992). The advisory committee for NSLRSDA requested a detailed analysis of observation coverage within the U.S. Landsat holdings, as well as that acquired and held by International Cooperator (IC) stations. Our analyses, to date, have found gaps of varying magnitude in U.S. holdings of Landsat global coverage data, which appear to reflect technical or administrative variations in mission operations. In many cases it may be possible to partially fill these gaps in U.S. holdings through observations that were acquired and are now being held at International Cooperator stations.