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.
Satellite Data Helps Jane Goodall Protect Chimpanzee Habitats (Video Trailer)
The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) uses satellite observations, including data from the NASA and USGS Landsat satellite series, in their efforts to work in partnership with local residents to understand and protect chimpanzee habitats.
NASA “Steppes” onto the Runway to Make Mongolian Cashmere Sustainable
Landsat allows herders to monitor vast expanses of desert in a way traditional field monitoring can’t support.
Landsat Reveals Dramatic Loss of Global Wetlands Over Past Two Decades
An analysis of over a million Landsat images has revealed that 4,000 square kilometres of tidal wetlands have been lost globally over twenty years.
World’s Largest Dynamic Kelp Map Launched
The Landsat-informed kelpwatch.org hosts the world’s largest open-source dynamic map of kelp forest canopy.
Shifting Shores of the Australian Continent Mapped with Landsat
Using decades of Landsat satellite imagery, scientists at Geoscience Australia have mapped annual shoreline locations for the entirety of Australia going back more than thirty years.
Diagnosis from the Sky: Catching Insect Infestations within Forests Before It’s Too Late
Fine-tuning remote sensing to protect forests from the spread of dangerous critters.
