Landsat’s Role in Managing Water Resources
Water is essential for life. A third of Earth’s populace has unreliable access to clean water. With current population growth and environmental trends, the U.N. Environmental Program estimates that 1.8 billion people will face water scarcity by 2025. Water means survival for people and other species we rely upon to thrive, making proper stewardship of our water resources vital. Good decisions require good data. Since 1972 the Landsat series of satellites has been providing such data. Landsat-based decisions on how to manage limited water resources have impacted millions of people worldwide. From finding water for refugees in arid nations to reducing pollution in our national waterways, Landsat enables decisions that directly help people.
A Satellite View of River Width
Hydrologists from the University of North Carolina have come up with an innovative way to estimate the size of rivers via satellite images. Combing through data acquired by Landsat satellites, George Allen and Tamlin Pavelsky have compiled a new database of river widths for North America.
Satellites Enable Coral Reef Science Leap from Darwin to Online
With Earth-observing satellite data, scientists can now monitor the health of coral reefs, even in the most remote regions scattered around the globe where it is otherwise difficult to see changes.
ProPublica Welcomes Readers to Las Vegas with Landsat
ProPublica has put together an interactive graphic called Welcome to Las Vegas*” that uses 40 years worth of Landsat data, together with a graphic representation of the city’s changing skyline and its water use statistics.
![Grape vines](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/20150520_nu1-300x185-1.png)
Landsat Helping in Virginia Wine Country
The Virginia Wine Board partnered with Wise DEVELOP to map the extension of Virginia vineyards. Vineyard extent was measured using data from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI).
NASA, NOAA, EPA and USGS Join Forces to Put Satellite Eyes on Threat to U.S. Freshwater
NASA has joined forces with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U.S. Geological Survey to transform satellite data designed to probe ocean biology into information that will help protect the American public from harmful freshwater algal blooms.
Historical Satellite Images Reveal Snow is Melting Earlier in Wyoming
A NASA study of a basin in northwestern Wyoming revealed that the snowmelt season in the area is now ending on average about sixteen days earlier than it did from the 1970s through the 1990s.