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.

Read More »
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.

Read More »

“The Landsat program is one of the world’s greatest open data success stories. Landsat satellites have been orbiting the earth for decades, creating an irreplaceable archive for studying questions ranging from the retreat of the Aral Sea to water quality in Iowa.”


— Tom Lee, Policy Lead for MapBox , Aug 9, 2018
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“Landsat is an invaluable tool for people working in our field of community wildfire safety.”


— Zeke Lunder, a pyrogeographer and founder of Deer Creek GIS , Feb 19, 2019
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“The Landsat satellite series has proven to be a perfect match to the needs of modern irrigated agriculture and water resources management.”


— Dr. Rick Allen, Professor of Water Resources Engineering , Nov 11, 2014
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“From now on, we’re going to be able to track all of the different types of changes in glaciers – there’s so much science to extract from the data.”


— Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, talking about the Landsat 8-based GoLIVE project , Dec 12, 2016
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“There are roughly 400 billion land pixels in a single [Landsat] global mosaic.” (With at least one image of every location on Earth per season every year, the entire 43-year Landsat record contains more than 50 trillion pixels.)


— Rama Nemani , Mar 26, 2015
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“We live on this planet Earth. We all know that we want to leave this planet for our children. We know the importance of sustainability and I think that’s what Landsat’s all about. It’s about helping us manage the planet that we live on for the long-term. And that’s why it’s there and that’s why it continues to be here. And I expect it to be there for the next generation as well.”


— Bruce Cook, Landsat Next Project Scientist, NASA , Jun 29, 2023
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“Landsat represents a public good, Earth-observation infrastructure that allows everyone to study their respective land resources and their change over time.”


— Matt Hansen , Nov 3, 2016
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“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
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“A 35-year dataset in marine biology is really hard to find… But we need long-term data to understand climate change and how it impacts populations. This was an exponential increase in the amount of information available about kelp forests in Oregon.”


— Sara Hamilton, OSU marine biologist , on the importance of Landsat data for her work , Mar 5, 2020
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“Anything that’s historic, it’s got to be Landsat. In temporal depth, Landsat is really the only game in town.”


— Mike Wulder, Canadian Forest Service, on historical land use change , Jan 16, 2018
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“For more than fifty years now, Landsat satellites have helped us learn more about how Earth systems work, how human activities affect those systems, and how we can make better decisions for the future. Landsat 9, the latest joint effort by NASA and USGS, proudly carries on that remarkable record.”


— NASA Administrator Bill Nelson , Aug 11, 2022
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“A sizable portion of our greenhouse gas contribution to the atmosphere comes from land use. And having Landsat data to look back to the 1970s, from there to now, you can then calculate or approximate year-by-year what that contribution is, and that’s extremely important.”


— Compton Tucker, a NASA scientist who studies forests and climate change , Jan 13, 2010
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“Landsat is the gold standard calibration reference because the Landsat Program has committed to world-class radiometric and geometric calibration standards.”


— Julia Barsi, Landsat Calibration Scientist , May 11, 2023
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“If you really want to have a long history of understanding any process in the Earth, Landsat is where you should go.”


— Tasso Azevedo, MapBiomas Initiative , Apr 19, 2021
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“The water resources communities all through the United States, especially in the irrigated areas, are very appreciative that NASA put the thermal imager on Landsat 8 and that future Landsats are guaranteed to include a thermal imager.”


— Dr. Rick Allen, water resources engineering professor at University of Idaho , Apr 23, 2018
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“We cannot do this project if the Landsat program doesn’t deliver this open data to the scientific community… We are benefiting from these long-term investments now.”


— Lilian Pintea, VP of conservation science, Jane Goodall Institute , Jan 24, 2017
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“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
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“The value of the Landsat archive is that we have a long-term memory of the changes that have occurred across the Amazon frontier.”


— Doug Morton, Chief of the Biospheric Sciences Lab at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center , Apr 19, 2021
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“Anything that’s historic, it’s got to be Landsat. In temporal depth, Landsat is really the only game in town.”


— Mike Wulder, Canadian Forest Service, on historical land use change , Jan 16, 2018
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“The first step of ecosystem accounting is to actually map the dynamics of ecosystems over time.”


— Celio De Sousa; NASA research scientist who uses Landsat data to create countrywide land cover maps , Mar 11, 2021
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“A recent industry report estimates that total annual value of $2.19 billion, far exceeding the multi-year total cost of building, launching, and managing Landsat satellites and sensors. The value is derived from consumer use of the data. There is no inherent value in idle data.”


— NASA API website , Dec 11, 2015
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“For more than fifty years now, Landsat satellites have helped us learn more about how Earth systems work, how human activities affect those systems, and how we can make better decisions for the future. Landsat 9, the latest joint effort by NASA and USGS, proudly carries on that remarkable record.”


— NASA Administrator Bill Nelson , Aug 11, 2022
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“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
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“This global census can help identify other lakes in need of monitoring or remediation, Dr. Shugar said. ‘We hope that it allows governments to see where the hot spots might be for glacial lakes growing in the future.'”


— Dan Shugar, glaciologist at the University of Calgary, speaking of his Landsat-based glacial lake inventory , Oct 2, 2020
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ABOUT LANDSAT

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.