USGS Reinvents Widely Used NLCD
Annual National Land Cover Database release now offers yearly view of landscape stretching back to 1985
Annual National Land Cover Database release now offers yearly view of landscape stretching back to 1985
Helping the World Through Science
Billions of people live unaware of a far-off USGS facility working every day to improve their lives
Billions of people live unaware of a far-off USGS facility working every day to improve their lives
USGS Finds New Way to Measure Ocean Depth with Landsat
EROS scientists debut method in publication
EROS scientists debut method in publication
Landsat's Exciting Future
Upcoming Landsat Next's trio of satellites will provide more frequent imagery in more detail
Upcoming Landsat Next's trio of satellites will provide more frequent imagery in more detail
Landsat - A Pillar of Land Remote Sensing
Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth is a podcast on remote sensing, Earth observation, land change and science, brought to you by the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center.
Eyes on Earth is a podcast on remote sensing, Earth observation, land change and science, brought to you by the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center.
Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center
At the USGS EROS Center, we study land change and produce land change data products used by researchers, resource managers, and policy makers across the nation and around the world. We also operate the Landsat satellite program with NASA, and maintain the largest civilian collection of images of the Earth’s land surface in existence, including tens of millions of satellite images.
Eyes on Earth
Eyes on Earth
In this episode of our remote sensing podcast, we talk about what EROS’s Reference and Validation team does to provide accuracy assessment metrics to users of NLCD.
Image of the Week
Image of the Week
The USGS EROS Landsat archive reached a milestone of 12 million Landsat Collection 2 Level-1 images in late 2024. A Landsat 9 image of America’s expansive southwestern desert was selected to celebrate this momentous occasion.
EROS Quick Links
EROS Quick Links
Find frequently visited webpages below.
News
Collaboration Advances Elevation Mapping
Collaboration Advances Elevation Mapping
Landsat’s 12 Millionth Image Showcases Distinct Landscapes
Landsat’s 12 Millionth Image Showcases Distinct Landscapes
Publications
Annual NLCD (National Land Cover Database)—The next generation of land cover mapping
Introduction The widely used National Land Cover Database (NLCD) has long been the foundational land cover source for scientists, resource managers, and decision makers across the United States.In 2024, a reinvention as Annual NLCD added the key improvement of annual time steps to show decades of change at a higher frequency than the intervals of 2–3 years used in the legacy NLCD. Annual...
An interagency perspective on improving consistency and transparency of land use and land cover mapping
Executive Summary Geospatial products of land use and land cover are broadly used in many applications. For example, the annual national greenhouse gas inventory uses the National Land Cover Database, the Coastal Change Analysis Program, Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools, the Forest Inventory and Analysis, and the National Resources Inventory to represent the land use...
Leveraging airborne imaging spectroscopy and multispectral satellite imagery to map glacial sediment plumes in Kachemak Bay, Alaska
Study RegionKachemak Bay is a fjord-type estuary in the northern Gulf of Alaska. Water quality and habitat characteristics are strongly influenced by freshwater and sediment input from multiple glacierized catchments.Study FocusWe present a new method combining imaging spectroscopy from an airborne survey with Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery to map water surface turbidity originating from...
Science
Eyes on Earth Episode 130 – NLCD Accuracy
Providing accuracy metrics for a land cover map takes some work. But there’s poetry and story involved, too.
Expanded Access to Real-Time Burn Severity Mapping
Near real-time burn severity maps are created by request to support Burned Area Emergency Response Teams managed by the US Forest Service and Department of the Interior agencies. This project expands the availability of these data for additional post-fire landscapes to support post-fire stabilization and rehabilitation activities of local, state, tribal, and non-land management federal agencies.
Eyes on Earth Episode 129 – What Happens During a Landsat Pass?
For this episode, we go inside the Landsat operations room at EROS to see what happens during a live Landsat pass.