Scientists have proven a new technique for distinguishing the corn and soybean crops using satellite data and the processing power of supercomputers.
April 2018
Scientists have proven a new technique for distinguishing the corn and soybean crops using satellite data and the processing power of supercomputers.
Martha Anderson talks about the value of Landsat and its thermal data for understanding agricultural lands.
A new program uses Landsat satellite data to automatically categorize what’s on the ground more accurately than other land cover products.
Thirty-one years of observed water use trends in the Southwestern U.S.
A new map was released today detailing croplands worldwide in the highest resolution yet.
Researchers detail their use of satellite images to produce annual maps of irrigation.
A new initiative called Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection provides definitive, timely information on how, why, and where the planet is changing.
A team of economists from the USGS Fort Collins Science Center has published a new report on Landsat imagery use in agriculture.
Using Landsat to map croplands over the U.S. High Plains Aquifer.
An approach for evaluating brush management conservation.
Water use trends observed in the Southwestern U.S. over three decades.
The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations published an audio article about using geospatial data, including Landsat, to monitor would agriculture on soundcloud.
When Russell Lethbridge walks his property in northern Australia — kicking-up clouds of dust that catch the sunlight as he assesses the grasses, shrubs and brush that fill the landscape with muted tones of green — he carries the legacy of five [...]
When global food prices spiked dramatically in late 2007 and into 2008, the costs of many basic dietary staples doubled or even tripled around the world, sparking protests and riots. Panicked governments stopped exporting food, aggravating the crisis.
Liheng Zhong, a Senior Delineator with the California Department of Water Resources is working on a way to map rice fields with Landsat to better manage water use. He presented some of this findings at #AGU15, here's what he shared with us.
There is a global effort afoot to fight hunger and reduce poverty by allowing anyone with an internet connection to see agricultural projections.
NASA, in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the California Department of Water Resources, released data today showing the effect the current drought has had on [...]
This fall scientists at the University of Nebraska, with partners at Google Inc., the University of Idaho and the Desert Research Institute, introduced the latest evolution of METRIC technology—an application called EEFLUX, which will allow [...]
The BirdReturns program, created by The Nature Conservancy of California, is an effort to provide "pop-up habitats" for some of the millions of shorebirds, such as sandpipers and plovers, that migrate each year from their summer breeding grounds [...]
The Social and Economic Analysis team at the Fort Collins Science Center recently added five new agriculture focused case studies to their "Landsat Imagery: A Unique Resource" website.
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).
Land change is a signature activity of human civilization. Since the dawn of history, people have purposefully converted natural landscapes to human-dominated areas. Typical motivations for land change are cultivation (e.g. slash-and-burn [...]
A recent White House-led assessment found that Landsat is among the Nation’s most critical Earth observing systems, second only to GPS and weather. A new USGS study, Landsat and Water — Case Studies of the Uses and Benefits of Landsat Imagery in [...]
Water availability and allocation are issues gaining a great deal of attention, particularly in arid climates. Increases in population growth and recent droughts bring urgency to measuring and monitoring water use in areas such as the western [...]
Earlier this year on Jan. 7, 2014, a giant in the world of Landsat applied science— Robert B. MacDonald—passed away. MacDonald was largely responsible for first envisioning and formulating how to use early Landsat data to estimate global crop [...]
This 1977 NASA video series, “Landsat—Satellite for All Seasons,” provides examples of early Landsat applications.
California’s persistent drought is forcing grape growers to keep a more-attentive-than-normal eye on their vines, as water shortages and elevated temperatures alter this year’s growing season.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) updated its online geospatial exploring tool, CropScape, adding Cropland Data Layers from crop year 2013. This tool gives public an easy access to [...]
It takes a lot of land to grow food for the world's seven billion people. About a third of Earth's terrestrial surface is used for agriculture. And about a third of that, in turn, is used to grow crops. Now, a new NASA-funded effort aims to map [...]
Speeding around the Earth at 16,800 mph (27,000 kph), two Landsat satellites are quietly, expertly watching and recording changes in Earth’s lands from space. They are gathering data for people to make maps–all kinds of wonderful maps–of our [...]
With unbiased Landsat imagery as evidence, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed an earlier jury-conviction of a northern California farmer found guilty on 16 counts of filing false federal crop insurance claims—scheming the [...]
In June, air pollution over Singapore and Malaysia spiked as forests in neighboring Sumatra (Indonesia) burned. Using NASA's daily fire alerts and official national maps, the fires were located in the vicinity of oil palm and acacia tree [...]
Images from Landsat satellites provided free to the public by the Department of the Interior's U.S. Geological Survey were the starting points for “a new breakthrough” reported today by Time and announced on the Official Google Blog. Using its [...]
For the first time, U.S. Geological Survey scientists have mapped long-term average evapotranspiration rates across the continental United States—a crucial tool for water managers and planners because of the huge role evapotranspiration plays in [...]
Does remote-sensing information, such as that from Landsat and similar Earth-observing satellites, provide economic benefits to society, and can this value be estimated? Using satellite data for northeastern Iowa, U.S. Geological Survey [...]
Dr. Stephanie Hulina, President of Geospatial Data Analysis Corporation (GDA Corp) discusses how access to free Landsat imagery from USGS enables her business to provide value-added products to her company's clients. The long-term continuity of [...]
[Source: Library of Congress] Dr. Martha Anderson, research scientist, USDA, talks about using images from the Landsat satellite program to monitor water use and drought on U.S. farms with pinpoint accuracy to measure evapotranspiration, the [...]
A water-rich polka dot pattern takes over the traditional rectangular patchwork of fields in this time series animation of 40 years of Landsat images. In the dry Texas panhandle near the town of Dalhart, this transformation is due to [...]
The Souss region of Agadir, Morocco is a fragile semi-arid area that is important to Morocco's fruit and vegetable agriculture industry. To better manage this vulnerable region a French-Moroccan collaboration is using a high-speed network for [...]
The green fields that dot the desert draw on water that in part was trapped during the last Ice Age. In addition to rainwater that fell over several hundred thousand years, this fossil water filled aquifers that are now buried deep under the [...]
Every month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Center for Climate Prediction has a drought briefing by teleconference to identify the latest drought areas in North America. ARS scientists Martha Anderson and Bill [...]
Source: Charles L. Walthall, USDA Agricultural Research Service Forum It's ironic that just when Earth-monitoring satellites are needed more than ever to address the food and freshwater demands of a burgeoning global human population, we face an [...]
In an effort to help Australian beef producers determine if intensive grazing systems are needed to remain competitive, a new report has analyzed various grazing systems in Queensland, Australia. Landsat data was used to help trend pasture [...]
Martha Anderson, a research scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, uses images from the Landsat satellite program to monitor water use and drought on U.S. farms with pinpoint accuracy, even at the scale of individual fields. As water [...]
This February with the help of Landsat a California farmer was found guilty of committing crop insurance fraud in San Joaquin, Contra Costa, and Lassen counties. The farmer was fined $10,000 dollars, ordered to pay $211,516 in restitution, and [...]
Source: Zhengwei Yang, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service To provide easier access to geospatial satellite products, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) today announced the launch of [...]
With the capability to provide valuable information about individual farm fields, vineyards, and orchards, NASA satellites soon will provide California growers in the San Joaquin Valley with important information about crop growth, irrigation [...]
Source: Louis Bergeron, Stanford Report A new study led by a Stanford researcher shows that more than 80 percent of the new farmland created in the tropics between 1980 and 2000 came from felling forests, which sends carbon into the atmosphere [...]
Xueliang Cai and Landsat Science Team member, Prasad Thenkabail, have used satellite data, including Landsat, to calculate crop water productivity, i.e. how much water is used for crop production—the so called “crop per drop.” Details of their [...]
Dean Stevenson has farmed the plains of south-central Idaho most of his forty-seven years. Like all farmers, he worries about things like the price of sugar beets and malt barley or the cost of gasoline, but most of all, he worries about water. [...]