Eco and Bio Archive

NASA has funded four projects to create new, virtual portals to share a wealth of biodiversity information with land stewards around the world.

Dr. Eric Bullock uses Earth observation data to explore the consequences of land use and land cover change in high biodiversity areas.

Landsat data (since 1972) is helping scientists Sean Healey and Zhiqiang Yang of the Rocky Mountain Research Station (U.S. Forest Service) study the long-term impact of the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens.

This bird’s-eye view of the relationship between temperature and bird biodiversity will help conservationists figure out where to prioritize their efforts in a warming world.

Researchers and conservationists around the world are using data and images from NASA satellite instruments to manage and track living creatures of all kinds.

Kelp forest cover near Tierra del Fuego appeared to follow approximately four-year cycles that mirror sea surface temperature and El Niño-Southern Oscillation rainfall patterns.

Landsat imagery shows that bull kelp canopy area can vary dramatically from year to year, and that long-term population trends vary from reef to reef.

How the fields of epidemiology and remote sensing intersect to help the public.

Intertidal wetlands significantly contribute to China’s environmental and ecological diversity, but are facing unprecedented pressures from anthropogenic development, as well as the threat of future sea level rise.

Researchers used Landsat satellites to track changes in surface water temperature for the Sekong, Sesan and Srepok rivers. Within one year of the opening of a major dam, downstream river temperatures during the dry season dropped by up to 3.6ºF.

Wetlands worldwide are vanishing at an alarming rate. New satellite-informed maps produced by ESA’s GlobWetland Africa project show how satellite observations can be used for the effective use and management of wetlands in Africa.

Plant life is expanding in the area around Mount Everest, and across the Himalayan region, new research shows.

Ecologists are using Landsat to locate waterbird habitat that may be vulnerable in dry years.

Landsat-based urban extent and phenology indicators provide new information about urban environments.

Landsat helps monitor changes in artisanal gold mining areas, enabling land managers to prevent and remedy environmental impacts.

There is a dance between the vegetation that thrives along a river’s edge and the availability of water; with Landsat, that relationship is now being understood in ways not previously possible.

Landsat is among the resources that scientists are using to assess hazards and track volcanic activity in Yellowstone.

Landsat helped confirm and quantify what was only anecdotally known before: beaver dams make wetlands uniquely resistant to wildfires.

A new longitudinal study from Australia has harnessed thirty years of NASA/USGS Landsat data to map the nationwide movement and migration of mangrove forests.

Landsat shows that large blowdown areas in southern Illinois forests are more heavily invaded by invasive species and slower to recover than smaller areas after a tornado.

Landsat, Sentinel-2, and ASTER confirm a rare lava lake in Mt. Michael’s crater on the sub-Antarctic Saunders Island—a “remarkable geological feature.”

Harnessing 30 years of Landsat data, a team of researchers from Australia has created the first 3D model of Australia’s entire coastline.

Prosopis was introduced to Kenya in the 1980s to provide fuelwood; it has since turned into an environmental scourge. Landsat has tracked its fast-paced spread.

USGS released the latest edition of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) for the U.S.—the most comprehensive land cover database that the USGS has ever produced.

A group of researchers have used Landsat data to help solve a case of missing mangroves in Saudi Arabia’s Jubail Conservation.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue increasing as they have been, 90% of Western Hemisphere cloud forests would be affected as early as 2060.

The Landsat-based Rangeland Analysis Platform and Green-Cast are valuable tools for ranchers adaptively managing their land.

A Landsat-based approach to map huckleberry distribution across Glacier National Park could one day provide warnings of potential human-bear conflict areas.

The study used machine-learning to analyze more than 700,000 Landsat images to map changing global distribution of intertidal areas over a 30-year period.

New insights on how vegetation phenology in urban and surrounding areas respond to urbanization.

Learn more about this rather unusual seasonal and semi-arid cloud forest.

Scientists are now able to determine what penguins are eating from space.

This research identified the Delmarva as an area of significant salt marsh loss over the last three decades.

There is evidence of oyster reefs driving estuary-scale detention of freshwater in the Suwannee Sound.

Across the Great Basin from 1984-2016, shrub and grass vegetation are declining.

USGS scientists are working with the Landsat-based NLCD shrubland dataset to help land managers restore native sagebrush landscapes.

Stanford research shows the drying trend in Canada’s Peace-Athabasca Delta is linked to the long-term decline in populations of the semi-aquatic muskrat.

The patterns of large-scale tropical deforestation endure across landscapes, even after more than a half-century of tropical rainforest expansion and growth.

Researchers have succeeded in producing distribution maps for a selection of important tropical tree species in Peruvian lowland Amazonia.

Australian researchers have used Landsat imagery to map coastal habitats critical to threatened and migratory species in northern Australia.

This project used Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 data to create land use maps to analyze change in riparian case study areas.

A Landsat 8 image of the Suwannee River meeting the Gulf of Mexico took first place in this year’s Envisioning Science image competition held by NC State.

A mapmaking app that can fast-track large-scale ecosystem analysis from months to minutes.

New research from EROS on dryland phenology, is poised to aid land managers’ fight against invasive, fire-prone species that wreak havoc on native landscapes.

A new, highly accurate, automated way to detect clouds and their shadows from satellite images over unusually cloudy places.

This is the first study to document more than three decades of land and water changes across Alaska.

Using a quarter century of Landsat data, geospatial researchers have mapped and modeled how vegetation responds to water availability across the entire Murray-Darling Basin.

Annual maps of the lower-48 United States produced from Landsat satellite data illustrate how these dynamic systems changed from 1986-2010.

Patrick Hostert from the University of Berlin discusses the value of Landsat’s long archive to studying phenology.

Last spring, NASA researchers flew over the Everglades and Puerto Rico to measure how mangroves and rainforests grow and evolve over time, then hurricanes Irma and Maria struck.