Landsat's Everyday Benefits
Landsat data improve people's quality of life!
The Landsat Program and satellite data archive provide roughly $3.45 billion in economic benefit to the United States and international communities according to a November 2019, USGS report.
Water Resources
Using Landsat satellite data, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey have helped to refine a technique called evapotranspiration mapping to measure how much water crops are using across landscapes and through time.
These water-use maps are created using a computer model that integrates Landsat and weather data.
Agriculture
The United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicts 9.7 billion people will sit down every day to the global dinner table by 2050. If this prediction is correct, the world is going to need more crops, more livestock, and more efficient and sustainable agricultural practices.
The world is going to need Landsat. The most enduring satellite system covering the Earth, Landsat is already vital to domestic and international food production. Farmers analyze crop health and stress with vegetation indices derived from Landsat.
Food Security
In many ways, the ability of remote-sensing satellite imagery to capture the unforgiving side of Nature has become a valuable asset to decision makers facing troubling food insecurities in their homelands. Turning satellite imaging on to Earth’s natural resources—as former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall first proposed doing in 1966—became a crucial component of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) project started in 1985 by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Federal agencies to provide timely, accurate data to participating countries to assist with the early detection of agricultural drought and to mitigate famine. Today, Landsat satellites are poised to take an even greater role in that mission.
Forest Health
In western North America, where infestations of mountain pine beetles continue to ravage thousands of acres of forest lands, Landsat satellites bear witness to the onslaught in a way that neither humans nor most other satellites can see.
From the ground, the extent of forest land damage is simply too large for field observers to quantify. But 438 miles above the Earth, Landsat satellites pass over every forest in the country dozens of times a year—every year—creating a historical archive of clear, composite images that tells important stories of life and death in our Nation’s forests.
Wildfire
A wildfire’s devastation of forest and rangeland seldom ends when the last embers die. In the western United States, rain on a scorched mountainside can turn ash into mudslides. Debris flows unleashed by rainstorms can put nearby homes into harm’s way and send people scrambling for safety.
The infrared capabilities of Landsat satellite imagery provide vital information about potential dangers after a wildfire.
Industrialization
In his 1963 book, “The Quiet Crisis,” former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall lamented what he called the decline of natural resources in the United States under the advancements of industrialization and urbanization.
For the first time, the planet seemed increasingly finite to Secretary Udall and others in the environmental movement. They argued that the United States needed to start managing its resources better. Udall eventually advocated to turn U.S. remote-sensing technology towards Earth to better understand and document the consequences of the spread of humanity. In fact, over 60 years later, Landsat satellites do exactly that.
