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Listen to USGS podcasts, interviews, and explorer audio clips related to earth science.
Eyes on Earth Episode 40 – Landsat Collection 2
Landsat data is more useful today than at any other point in its nearly 50-year history. The USGS Collections strategy is a major reason why. Landsat Collections align and correct satellite acquisitions from 1972 through the present to make the data easier to work with through time. The USGS has now released Collection 2, an upgrade that improves geometric accuracy,
Eyes on Earth Episode 39 – Brazil’s Water Use
Brazil is a fascinating study in water use. Brazil uses roughly 72 percent of its water for irrigated agriculture, and its herds of cattle, pigs and poultry are among the largest in the world. Water management teams from that country’s National Water Agency have worked in recent years with researchers from the USGS EROS Center to learn how to map, and therefore more
Eyes on Earth Episode 38 – Time Series Analysis with Landsat
In the past, remote sensing scientists looked for change on the Earth’s surface primarily by comparing one Landsat image to another. Today, open access to Landsat data, high-performance and cloud computing capabilities and sophisticated algorithms can be used to scan the entirety of the archive for change, enabling researchers to learn more about how the landscape shifts
USGS Outstanding in the Field - Not Enough Beaches in Grand Canyon?
In this episode of Outstanding in the Field, we are talking about beaches in a place that most people probably would not think of—the Grand Canyon. USGS scientists at the Southwest Biological Science Center’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center in Flagstaff, Arizona are looking at how a dam and vegetation are making things difficult for the beaches in Grand Canyon
Eyes on Earth Episode 36 – International Charter Turns 20
When a disaster like a hurricane, flood or major wildfire hits a remote part of the world, the International Charter Space and Natural Disasters springs into action. The Charter’s members collect and distribute satellite-derived data that documents the damage, as well as derived products like as fire perimeter or structural damage maps – all at no cost to national
Eyes on Earth Episode 37 – Insuring West Africa’s Crops
The Green Revolution leaned on fertilizers, drought-resistant seeds and other modern innovations to boost agricultural production across much of the planet in the second half of the 20th Century. But many of those innovations never reached West Africa, partially because the lack of social safety nets and crop insurance made such investments too risky. On this episode of
Eyes on Earth Episode 35 – Watching the Water Supply with OpenET
Evapotranspiration is the process by which water transpires from the leaves and stems of plants and evaporates from the Earth’s surface. ET is an important metric for managing water use, but data availability has long been an issue. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about OpenET, a bold initiative whose goal is to improve water management by making that water
Eyes on Earth Episode 34 – Open Training Data
Today, the world is awash in remotely sensed data. Satellites launched by countries and commercial companies circle the planet collecting data every day. Accessing data from multiple agencies and plaforms and turning it into useful analytics can be a daunting and complex endeavor, however. On today's episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from the founder of the non-profit
Eyes on Earth Episode 32 - Lunar Calibration
Calibration teams at the USGS EROS Center use a variety of methods to make sure the data collected by Landsat satellites are an accurate representation of the Earth’s surface. They’re constantly comparing new imagery to old, tweaking algorithms to correct issues that might emerge, and using unchanging Earth surface sites and on-the-ground readings to check for consistency
Eyes on Earth Episode 33 – Global Land Change
Mapping land cover across the United States using Landsat satellite data is a difficult, time-intensive job, but there are jobs far larger. Matt Hansen, a Maryland-based professor and member of the Landsat Science Team focuses his efforts on mapping land cover and change on a global scale. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from Matt on how he and his team use the
Eyes on Earth Episode 31 – Landsat 7 Flight Operations
Just recently, in mid-July, the flight operations team charged with keeping the Landsat 7 satellite running smoothly achieved a major milestone. They have gone 8 straight years now without an operator error. Considering that the team is operating a machine that costs hundreds of millions of dollars and flies at more than 17,000 miles per hour, avoiding any kind or operator
Eyes on Earth Episode 30 – Remapping LANDFIRE
In the days before LANDFIRE, fire scientists often struggled to find the vegetation and fuels data they needed to map the path of fires, keep firefighters safe, and to model fire recovery. The dizzying array of data points found in the map layers of the LANDFIRE product suite—from hundreds of vegetation classes to tree canopy height and bulk to fuel potential and beyond—
Eyes on Earth Episode 29 – Tracking Landscape Change with LCMAP
The U.S. Geological Survey took a bold step toward documenting change across the landscape with the launch of the first Landsat satellite in 1972. Since then, it’s collected nearly five decades of imagery. But it takes more than just imagery to understand change. It takes time, effort—and serious computing horsepower. The USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and
Eyes on Earth Episode 28 - Peer Reviews
Remote sensing is not an especially venerable scientific discipline, at least in comparison to fields like biology, chemistry or medicine. From its beginnings with aerial photography in the 1920s through the initial stages of satellite-based land imaging in the early 1970s, few peer-reviewed publications were available for scientists to share their ideas and improve their
Eyes on Earth Episode 26 – Satellite Constellations
Between them, Landsats 7 and 8 image the entire land surface of Earth every eight days. The USGS orbiters are just two of many Earth observing satellites flying at the same altitude and collecting data at the same time of day. Other “constellations” of satellites gather other kinds of data, traveling one after the other like cars on a train to collect information that can
Eyes on Earth Episode 24 - Wildfire Risk to Communities
The U.S. has plenty of data on wildfire risk. There are local and regional risk assessments, complex datasets like LANDFIRE and tracking tools like the EROS Fire Danger Monitor, as well as a host of resources and research projects devoted to the subject. But much of that information is steeped in the language of fire science and difficult to comprehend for those outside it
Eyes on Earth Episode 27 - Australian Wildfires
The continent of Australia experienced some of the most devastating wildfires in its history in late 2019 and early 2020. Remote sensing scientists in Australia, who collaborate closely with EROS, relied on satellites like Landsat to help assess and monitor the damage. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from one of our Australian partners on the value of satellite
Eyes on Earth Episode 22 – Meet the Mendenhall Fellow
The Mendenhall Program offers a range of two-year post-doctoral research fellowships within the U.S. Geological Survey. Heather Tollerud took advantage of the program in 2015 to study drought and land cover at the USGS EROS Center, and has since become a key player in the Center’s innovative Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) initiative. In this
Eyes on Earth Episode 21 - Forests of Ghana
In the West African nation of Ghana, tropical forests are more than landscape. They are woven into language, custom, and culture. They are also the source of timber for home heating and industry, as well as barriers to agricultural production. Those are just a few of the reasons why deforestation has come alongside the nation’s rapid population growth. In this episode of
Eyes on Earth Episode 19 – 100 Million Landsat Downloads
For decades, each Landsat image had a price tag – a hefty one at times, ranging from $400 to as much as $4,000. That all changed in 2008 with the enactment of an open data policy that made the entire Landsat archive available for download at no cost to the user. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with one of the architects of that policy, as well as an EROS data
Eyes on Earth Episode 23 – Ecosystem Monitoring
Landsat satellites offer a wealth of information to scientists studying ecosystem health and recovery. Data products derived from Landsat open even more areas of inquiry. Landsat Burned Area products, for example, can help researchers identify previously unknown fires that took place from 1984 through the present. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk to one of the
Eyes on Earth Episode 15 – Burn Severity Mapping
Scientists at EROS have spent years refining their approach to mapping burn severity using remotely-sensed data from satellites like Landsat, but Landsat comes with limitations. Landsat data cannot see the vegetation below a thick tree canopy, for example. In this episode, we learn about a project in South Dakota’s Black Hills that seeks to leverage 3D data gathered using
Eyes on Earth Episode 20 - Mapping Alaska's Permafrost
The Arctic is changing at a more rapid rate than the rest of the planet. Some of the most significant changes are tied to the thawing of near-surface permafrost, the layers of frozen soil containing vast stocks of stored carbon. Scientists at EROS have used remote sensing tools to map the extent of near-surface permafrost in Alaska, offering a baseline for further research
Eyes on Earth Episode 11 - EROS Fall Poster Session
Each fall, EROS invites its staff scientists and area graduate students to visit for a noontime poster session. The poster sessions offer a change for those researchers to present their results to their peers and get feedback from their fellow scientists. For this episode, we’ll hear about research into biofuels, cloud-friendly Landsat data, shrubland mapping and satellite