Landsat’s Role in Managing Ecosystems and Biodiversity
Our world is made of complex networks of living things and physical elements that constantly interact and affect each other. Such networks are known as “ecosystems.” Healthy and economically important ecosystems such as temperate forests, wetlands, grasslands, coastal zones, coral reefs, and rainforests all play roles in human life. For example, farm and rangeland ecosystems must be healthy to produce the grains and livestock on which we depend as a nation. Marine ecosystems depend on the health of land ecosystems, because coastal areas provide habitat needed to support the productivity and diversity of aquatic organisms. Landsat has brought valuable capabilities to ecosystem studies. Landsat instruments measure reflected light in visible and infrared wavelengths. Because plants reflect little visible light and a lot of infrared light when they are healthy, the measurement of both types of light simultaneously gives scientists a way to assess plant health and density over a landscape. Measurements are detailed enough while still covering a wide area that ecologists can expand their interpretations of local events and processes, such as an insect infestation in a specific forest, to a regional scale. This helps them to gauge the health of larger ecosystems. Because Landsat data are accurately mapped to reference points on the ground and adjusted for topographic relief, they can be integrated with other geographic data sets and models to explore more complex studies of ecosystems and biodiversity across space and time.
![semi-aquatic muskrat](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20181126_nu1-1024x683-1.png)
Stanford Researchers Find That a Drying Canadian Delta has Driven Muskrat Population Decline
Stanford research shows the drying trend in Canada’s Peace-Athabasca Delta is linked to the long-term decline in populations of the semi-aquatic muskrat.
Despite Recovery, Widespread Evidence of Deforestation Remains a Half-Century Later
The patterns of large-scale tropical deforestation endure across landscapes, even after more than a half-century of tropical rainforest expansion and growth.
Landsat Used To Predict Tree Species Distributions in Peruvian Lowland Amazonia
Researchers have succeeded in producing distribution maps for a selection of important tropical tree species in Peruvian lowland Amazonia.
Reading the Tides: Monitoring Estuarine Habitats in Northern Australia with Landsat
Australian researchers have used Landsat imagery to map coastal habitats critical to threatened and migratory species in northern Australia.
Evaluating Effects of Land Use Change on Watershed Health and Carbon Sequestration in Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula
This project used Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 data to create land use maps to analyze change in riparian case study areas.
Where Rivers Meet the Sea—Envisioning Science with Landsat
A Landsat 8 image of the Suwannee River meeting the Gulf of Mexico took first place in this year’s Envisioning Science image competition held by NC State.