Earth-observation records – aerial photographs dating from the 1930s and satellite images dating from the 1960s – impartially offer a 75-year history of changes on the land. This vast reservoir of data supplies objective reference points essential in documenting land change and in understanding climate change. Preserving records that are important to our nation’s history while providing convenient public access to them is a vital responsibility of government. 

To meet this responsibility in the Earth-observation field, two federal agencies have created an unusual framework to preserve and provide access to Earth imagery and geospatial resources. The U.S. Geological Survey recently entered into an agreement with the National Archives and Records Administration to preserve and provide access to USGS Earth imagery and geospatial data. On June 13, USGS Director Mark Myers and Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein, NARA, signed the agreement detailing how the agencies will work together to care for the data. USGS currently has archived the massive data resources at its Earth Resources Observation and Science Center in Sioux Falls, S.D.

“Today we are marking an important milestone for USGS EROS to become an affiliated archive within the National Archives system,” Weinstein remarked during the signing ceremony. “This agreement between NARA and USGS is a guarantee that our nation’s collections of aerial and satellite images of the world’s land areas will be permanently maintained, preserved, and accessible to the public. These records are crucial to scientists and policymakers around the world in understanding how man and society affect the natural landscape.”

“The USGS EROS archive of historic satellite imagery and aerial photography is the largest civilian archive of such data in the United States,” Myers added. “Occupying over 40,000 square feet and totaling nearly three petabytes (3,000 terabytes) of electronic data and millions of film frames, the EROS archive is massive, essential and irreplaceable.  We have a daunting responsibility to care for this collection. Working with the National Archives, we will continue to preserve and make these records readily available to all users worldwide.”

The agreement establishes a joint commitment to enhance the preservation and access capabilities of both NARA and USGS. The two agencies will work together to ensure that NARA has legal custody and ultimate responsibility for the preservation of the archived EROS holdings. They will also ensure that USGS will meet the stringent preservation and access standards of NARA. The records will remain at the EROS Center under USGS’ day-to-day control. USGS has already created an advanced information-management system that enables public electronic access to historical Earth-observation data.

Photographs of the imagery archive at USGS EROS are available at http://eros.usgs.gov/archive/nslrsda/files.php.

For more information about USGS Earth Imagery, visit http://remotesensing.usgs.gov.

For more information about National Archives and Records Administration, visit www.archives.gov.