National Land Imaging Program
Publications
Landsat Collection 2 geometric calibration updates
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) changed the management and delivery of Landsat products to the public in its archive through the implementation of Collections. The Collections process ensures consistent data quality through time and across all the Landsat sensors with a few modifications to the metadata. The consistent data products from...
Rengarajan, R.; Choate, Michael; Storey, James C.; Franks, Shannon; Micijevic, Esad
2020 Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation—Remote sensing satellite compendium
The Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation (JACIE) is a collaboration between five Federal agencies that are major users and producers of satellite land remote sensing data. In recent years, the JACIE group has observed ever-increasing numbers of remote sensing satellites being launched. This rapidly growing wave of new systems creates a need...
Ramaseri Chandra, Shankar N.; Christopherson, Jon B.; Casey, Kimberly A.
Economic valuation of landsat imagery
Landsat satellites have been operating since 1972, providing a continuous global record of the Earth’s land surface. The imagery is currently available at no cost through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). A previous USGS study estimated that Landsat imagery provided users an annual benefit of $2.19 billion in 2011, with U.S. users accounting for...
Straub, Crista L.; Koontz, Stephen R.; Loomis, John B. User needs for future Landsat missions
Landsat satellites have been operating since 1972, providing the longest continuous observation record of the Earth’s land surface. Over the past half century, the Landsat user community has grown exponentially, encompassing more diverse and evolving scientific research and operational uses. Understanding current and future user needs is crucial...
Wu, Zhuoting; Snyder, Gregory; Vadnais, Carolyn M.; Arora, Rohit; Babcock, Michael; Stensaas, Gregory L.; Doucette, Peter; Newman, Timothy
Landsat 9
Landsat 9 is a partnership between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that will continue the Landsat program’s critical role of repeat global observations for monitoring, understanding, and managing Earth’s natural resources. Since 1972, Landsat data have provided a unique resource for...
Landsat: The cornerstone of global land imaging
Since 1972, the joint NASA/ U.S. Geological Survey Landsat series of Earth Observation satellites have provided an uninterrupted space-based data record of the Earth’s land surface to help advance scientific research towards the understanding of our planet and the environmental impact of its inhabitants. Early Landsat satellites offered a wealth...
Butcher, Ginger; Barnes, Christopher; Owen, Linda Landsat benefiting society for fifty years
Since 1972, data acquired by the Landsat series of satellites have become integral to land management for both government and the private sector, providing scientists and decision makers with key information about agricultural productivity, ice sheet dynamics, urban growth, forest monitoring, natural resource management, water quality, and...
Rocchio, Laura E. P.; Connot, Peggy; Young, Steve; Ramsayer, Kate; Owen, Linda; Bouchard, Michelle; Barnes, Christopher Analysis Ready Data: Enabling analysis of the Landsat archive
Data that have been processed to allow analysis with a minimum of additional user effort are often referred to as Analysis Ready Data (ARD). The ability to perform large scale Landsat analysis relies on the ability to access observations that are geometrically and radiometrically consistent, and have had non-target features (clouds) and poor...
Dwyer, John L.; Roy, David P.; Sauer, Brian; Jenkerson, Calli B.; Zhang, Hankui K.; Lymburner, Leo Effects of contemporary land-use and land-cover change on the carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems in the United States
Changes in land use and land cover (LULC) can have profound effects on terrestrial carbon dynamics, yet their effects on the global carbon budget remain uncertain. While land change impacts on ecosystem carbon dynamics have been the focus of numerous studies, few efforts have been based on observational data incorporating multiple ecosystem types...
Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Liu, Jinxun; Daniel, Colin; Rayfield, Bronwyn; Sherba, Jason T.; Hawbaker, Todd J.; Zhu, Zhiliang; Selmants, Paul; Loveland, Thomas R. Radiometric characterization of Landsat Collection 1 products
Landsat data in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) archive are being reprocessed to generate a tiered collection of consistently geolocated and radiometrically calibrated products that are suitable for time series analyses. With the implementation of the collection management, no major updates will be made to calibration of the Landsat sensors...
Micijevic, Esad; Haque, Md. Obaidul; Mishra, Nischal Radiometric calibration updates to the Landsat collection
The Landsat Project is planning to implement a new collection management strategy for Landsat products generated at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. The goal of the initiative is to identify a collection of consistently geolocated and radiometrically calibrated images across the entire...
Micijevic, Esad; Haque, Md. Obaidul; Mishra, Nischal Landsat-8: Status and on-orbit performance
Landsat 8 and its two Earth imaging sensors, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) have been operating on-orbit for 2 ½ years. Landsat 8 has been acquiring substantially more images than initially planned, typically around 700 scenes per day versus a 400 scenes per day requirement, acquiring nearly all land scenes....
Markham, Brian L.; Barsi, Julia A.; Morfitt, Ron; Choate, Michael J.; Montanaro, Matthew; Arvidson, Terry; Irons, James R.