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.
Strong Tides, Vanishing Lakes May Prove Beneficial to Antarctic Ice Shelf
Satellites have helped show that strong tidal activity may facilitate water-induced fracturing, or hydrofracturing, where land ice transitions to floating ice shelf and cause the meltwater lake to drain quickly, often in as little as several days.
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.
Food Documentary Explores Satellites and the Future of Farming
BBC’s Follow the Food documentary series has reported on Earth observations supporting food production, market stability and on-farm decisions.
When Fire+Flood=Beach
A new study combines decades of Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery with hydrologic and oceanographic data to look at how changes on land affect coastlines in Big Sur, California.
Landsat Shows Western Canada’s Glaciated Environments Rapidly Changing
A new mapping tool developed by UNBC researchers shows that western Canadian glaciers are shrinking at an increasing rate.
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.
