“This is really an exciting time for Landsat polar science, a new era so to speak. With Landsat Next on the horizon, the LEAP special request program and its observations of Earth’s polar regions—and the global cryospheric state more broadly—can only be expected to grow in impact and relevance.”

“Consistent, trustworthy, and accessible satellite data make monitoring the rapid changes of Earth’s surface possible.”

“[T]he pivotal aspect of the Landsat mission is the acquisition and curation of the most comprehensive and longest uninterrupted cross-calibrated EO data record ever gathered, with ensured continuity, and with ongoing efforts to consistently reprocess the entire image archive to incorporate cutting-edge advances in data preprocessing, which are then distributed as ‘collections’.”

“In order to produce a rock outcrop map for the entire Antarctic continent, we required a freely available georeferenced multispectral dataset. The dataset needed to cover the high latitudes; be recently acquired; be of a high enough resolution to identify individual outcrops and geomorphological features; and have suitable coverage of the continent. On this basis, the Landsat 8 multispectral satellite data was chosen for analysis as no other platform met these requirements. It would not ha…

“It is undeniable that having access to long-term satellite data has allowed ecologists and environmental managers to increase their understanding of the natural world, to make predictions about how this world might transform and to design efficient mitigation and adaptation strategies in the face of global environmental change.”

“Many people have no idea how Earth imagery has improved their daily lives as it has become integrated into modern technologies. Like GPS and weather data, information from Landsat is woven into the fabric of our economy and society.”

“When we showed historical Landsat and more recent high resolution images to communities and shared our analysis, people realized what they’d lost over time and wanted to engage in conversations about how to bring the forests back.”

“To make accurate machine learning models of major crops, we needed decades of satellite imagery from the entire globe. Thanks to Google Earth Engine hosting the entire Landsat archive publicly on Google Cloud, we can focus on algorithms instead of worrying about collecting petabytes of data. Earth observation will continue to improve with every new satellite launch and so will our ability to forecast global food supply.”