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.
Precious Resources: Water & Landsat’s Thermal Band
Contributor: Laura Rocchio “Chronic water supply problems in many areas of the West are among the greatest challenges we face in the coming decades.” Mark Limbaugh, the U.S. Department of
Landsat Shows Shrinking Ponds in Alaska
A first-of-its kind analysis of fifty years of remotely sensed imagery from the 1950s to 2002 shows a dramatic reduction in the size and number of more than 10,000 ponds
Landsat and MODIS Data Help Assess the Health of Florida's Coral Reefs
Contributor: Mike Bettwy NASA satellite data was used to help monitor the health of Florida’s coral reef as part of a field research effort completed this August and September. The project
UNEP Releases Atlas of Africa's Lakes That Relies Heavily on Landsat Imagery
The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Global Resource Information Database (GRID), located in Sioux Falls, SD, has released an atlas showing landscape-scale environmental changes that have affected Africa’s lakes over
Monitoring Ice Sheet Activity in Antarctica
In this article, glaciologist Dr. Robert Bindschadler describes his use of Landsat data to study Antarctica. “The most impressive aspect of Antarctica is its shear enormity. It’s larger than the
Supporting Restoration of the “Garden of Eden”: Mesopotamian Wetlands
Contributor: Jeff Masek The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) has undertaken an assessment of the recent dramatic decline in some unique Mesopotamian marshes, and has relied heavily on Landsat data for
