Landsat Science

Landsat Science

Landsat Science

Landsat Science

50 Years of

Landsat Science

“If you really want a long history of understanding any process on Earth, Landsat is where you should go.”

-Tasso Azevedo, MapBiomas Initiative

50 Years of

Landsat Science

“If you really want a long history of understanding any process on Earth, Landsat is where you should go.”

-Tasso Azevedo, MapBiomas Initiative

50 Years of

Landsat Science

“If you really want a long history of understanding any process on Earth, Landsat is where you should go.”

-Tasso Azevedo, MapBiomas Initiative

Landsat Next Defined

Landsat Next Defined

June 29, 2023

Landsat Next is on the horizon—the new mission will not only ensure continuity of the longest space-based record of Earth’s land surface, it will fundamentally transform the breadth and depth of actionable information freely available to end users. Take a look at the new capabilities that will define the next Landsat mission.

Natural color Landsat 8 image of Taipei, Taiwan and the neighboring Tatun Volcanic Group.

Could Land Surface Temperature Help Predict Earthquakes?

August 28, 2024

In Taiwan, earthquakes are linked to shallow stores of magma. New research explores this connection by linking land surface temperature with earthquakes.

Landscape at Murphy Dome fire scar, outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, during the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) in August 2022. Credit: NASA/Katie Jepson

Tundra Vegetation to Grow Taller, Greener Through 2100, NASA Study Finds

August 6, 2024

Warming global climate is changing the vegetation structure of forests in the far north. It’s a trend that will continue at least through the end of this century, according to NASA researchers.

Ross Walter working on his Landsat Spectral Band Comparison Tool

Banding Together: Landsat Introduces New Spectral Band Comparison Tool

July 31, 2024

Ross Walter, from the Landsat Outreach Team, has turned a much used, but static, Landsat Spectral Band Comparison graphic into a dynamic, multifaceted tool that enables users to compare different sensors and output the comparison graphics they need.

Landsat Next Defined

Landsat Next Defined

June 29, 2023

Landsat Next is on the horizon—the new mission will not only ensure continuity of the longest space-based record of Earth’s land surface, it will fundamentally transform the breadth and depth of actionable information freely available to end users. Take a look at the new capabilities that will define the next Landsat mission.

Natural color Landsat 8 image of Taipei, Taiwan and the neighboring Tatun Volcanic Group.

Could Land Surface Temperature Help Predict Earthquakes?

August 28, 2024

In Taiwan, earthquakes are linked to shallow stores of magma. New research explores this connection by linking land surface temperature with earthquakes.

Landscape at Murphy Dome fire scar, outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, during the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) in August 2022. Credit: NASA/Katie Jepson

Tundra Vegetation to Grow Taller, Greener Through 2100, NASA Study Finds

August 6, 2024

Warming global climate is changing the vegetation structure of forests in the far north. It’s a trend that will continue at least through the end of this century, according to NASA researchers.

Ross Walter working on his Landsat Spectral Band Comparison Tool

Banding Together: Landsat Introduces New Spectral Band Comparison Tool

July 31, 2024

Ross Walter, from the Landsat Outreach Team, has turned a much used, but static, Landsat Spectral Band Comparison graphic into a dynamic, multifaceted tool that enables users to compare different sensors and output the comparison graphics they need.

Rugged terrain on New Zealand’s South Island gives rise to a distinctive lenticular cloud formation, known locally as the Taieri Pet.

Marvelous Lenticularis

September 12, 2024

Weather-Making Fire Burns in Southern California

Weather-Making Fire Burns in Southern California

September 10, 2024

Alaska’s Iconic Columbia Glacier Still Retreats

Alaska’s Iconic Columbia Glacier Still Retreats

September 9, 2024

“Landsat fit all our criteria, and best of all it was free and very easy to download and work with.”

— Dr. Emily Fairfax, Assistant Professor in the department of Environmental Science and Resource Management at California State University Channel Islands , Dec 11, 2019

“I think of Landsat as a Swiss Army knife. It is one basic set of observations that feeds an entire range of Earth science applications and research.”

— Jeff Masek, Landsat 9 Project Scientist (NASA) , Feb 8, 2022

“The Landsat data record is absolutely invaluable—wetland managers can start to understand if changes they are seeing take place over months, years or decades.”

— Bex Dunn, Earth Observation Scientist at Geoscience Australia , Jun 22, 2023

“Data from Landsat and the MODIS sensor are well-suited to help people make informed policy decisions about ecosystem health, water management, agriculture and much more.”

— Jim Irons , Dec 17, 2014

“[Landsat] became freely available in 2008 and I think that that completely changed how we are able to use this type of data for decision making.”

— Africa Flores , Nov 5, 2020

“Remote sensing with satellites such as Landsat and sensors such as MODIS allows scientists to conduct a range of studies they wouldn’t otherwise be able to.”

— Karl Flessa, co-chief scientist of the Minute 319 Science Team , Dec 17, 2014

“By unleashing the power of our vast and open data resources, the Climate Data Initiative helps spark private sector innovation and will leverage resources for those on the front lines who are dealing with climate change. We are pooling into one place data from across the federal government to make it more accessible to the public and we hope our efforts will inspire other countries to follow suit.”

— Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Interior , Dec 9, 2014

“During the decade following 1969, a singular development catapulted computer mapping: the launch of Landsat by NASA and the U.S. Department of the Interior in July 1972.”

— Joe Francica , Dec 31, 2018

“Nothing is harder to image than the past. It is imperative that all Landsat observations are archived and made available to users.”

— Wulder et al., 2015 , Aug 23, 2016

“Landsat is an invaluable resource for developing these high resolution maps. Without the Landsat imagery we would not have the spectral information needed to decompose urban landscapes into Local Climate Zone types. Hence the data is at the heart of the project and it is the most critical piece—without Landsat there is no project.”

— Johannes Feddema, University of Victoria , Dec 15, 2016

“Population in 1972… was around 4 billion people. When we launched Landsat 8 there was 7 billion people on the surface of the planet. Due to those factors our land use and land cover has changed dramatically and continues to change and we use the information and the images from the Landsat satellites to understand the change, to study the trends, and to predict the future.”

— Jim Irons , Nov 26, 2014

“Landsat, with its five-decade record of robust collection, calibration and archiving, and its longstanding service as a global reference to cross-calibrate other missions, improves not only the quality of those systems but the overall quality of the global ‘system of systems’.”

— Kevin Gallagher, Associate Director for Core Science Systems, USGS , Dec 1, 2022

“We looked at satellite images taken by the NASA-U.S. Geological Survey Landsat missions from 1972 and 1999 and the loss of forest and woodland cover along valleys and steep slopes was clear: eighty percent of the forests were gone. Through our analysis of Landsat forest change maps using GIS, we also calculated that the risk of landslide had increased fivefold during that time.”

— Lilian Pintea, VP of conservation science, Jane Goodal1 Institute, “ , Sep 29, 2015

“Data from Landsat and the MODIS sensor are well-suited to help people make informed policy decisions about ecosystem health, water management, agriculture and much more.”

— Jim Irons , Dec 17, 2014

“The Deltares Aqua Monitor is the first global-scale tool that shows at 30-m resolution where water is converted to land and vice versa. With assistance from Google Earth Engine, it analyzes satellite imagery from multiple Landsat missions, which observed Earth for more than three decades, on the fly.”

— Donchyts et al. , Sep 1, 2016

“With the Landsat satellite system capable of delivering global coverage every 8 days, we have an unprecedented ability to monitor global forest change. The 2014 tree cover loss data, incorporating hundreds of thousands of Landsat images, confirms that deforestation is not just high in certain countries, it’s speeding up. The next step is to use this information to improve forest protection and more equitably balance economic development with the invaluable ecosystem services forests provid…

— Matt Hansen, Professor of Geography, University of Maryland , Sep 2, 2015

“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.”

— Nathalie Pettorelli, Zoological Society of London , Jun 10, 2015

“There is no better source of information [than Landsat] to document the changes happening to our planet’s landscapes—and we need this continuous record to help our communities become more resilient to the dramatic effects we are seeing.”

— Tanya Trujillo, Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, U.S. Department of the Interior , Jul 21, 2022

“As a researcher with a limited budget, using the Landsat data for free made this project possible. The global geographic range together with free availability ensures that our study could potentially be repeated in other countries.”

— Kristine Engemann, Department of Bioscience at Aarhus University in Denmark , May 22, 2019

“The analysis enabled by Landsat heat data provides a foundation for planning and problem solving. Without the data, we’re just guessing about what interventions work best to mitigate hot spots… unraveling the complexity of urban heat will ultimately help us build better cities and improve residents’ quality of life.”

— Jamie Ponce, executive director of Civic Infrastructure Collaborative , Dec 1, 2021

“The Landsat mission has been monitoring Earth from orbit for more than 40 years. It is by far the longest continuous record of the surface of the planet, and certainly one of the most valuable data sets in existence.”

— Betsy Mason , May 31, 2014

“Landsat has undoubtedly transformed our ability to understand urbanization processes and how cities expand and evolve… the multi-spectrality of Landsat, its relatively high spatial resolution, its revisit period, and especially the long observational record that made millions of scenes publicly available, make Landsat a key asset for the research community.”

— Ran Goldblatt, Big Pixel Initiative of the UC San Diego’s School , Dec 16, 2016

“Population in 1972… was around 4 billion people. When we launched Landsat 8 there was 7 billion people on the surface of the planet. Due to those factors our land use and land cover has changed dramatically and continues to change and we use the information and the images from the Landsat satellites to understand the change, to study the trends, and to predict the future.”

— Jim Irons , Nov 26, 2014

“We basically built … Tinder for Landsat maps: Swipe right if it’s good, swipe left if it’s bad.”

— James Crawford, Orbital Insight CEO on his company's surface water detection app , Feb 25, 2016

The NASA/USGS Landsat Program provides the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. Landsat data give us information essential for making informed decisions about Earth’s resources and environment.