Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Dynamic Surface Water Extent, Burned Area, Fractional Snow Covered Area, and Fractional Snow Covered Area Statistics products are now available for download from the USGS. These higher-level science products are research-quality and applications ready and reduce the upfront processing time users needed to prepare tiles for examination.

These Level-3 science products are generated from Landsat Collection 2 Analysis Ready Data (ARD) inputs.  

NOTE: Landsat 9 Collection 2 Level-3 products will become available later in 2022.  

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details

Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE)

Aquatic researchers require current habitat information, especially surface water extent. A variety of environmental processes impact surface water extent including meteorology, hydrology, and geology processes. DSWE provides raster layers that represent surface water inundation per pixel for Landsat data acquired from 1984–present, for the conterminous (CONUS) United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Aquatic scientists and water resource managers harness Landsat data to predict and understand impacts by changes in surface water extent.

Burned Area

Precise and polished data on fire occurrences are essential to understanding burned area trends for Landsat data acquired from 1984–present, for CONUS. The Burned Area product enables users to identify burned areas across all ecosystems including forests, shrublands, and grasslands. The product identifies per pixel burn classification and burn probability. Utilizing the Burned Area product, Landsat data users can quantify patterns of fire occurrences and project future fire trends.

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details

Fractional Snow Covered Area (fSCA)

Landsat’s spatial resolution offers the capability to resolve snow cover patterns across topographically complex mountainous regions. Snow cover is spatially and temporally variable and is often concentrated in remote or inaccessible land regions making spaceborne remote sensing the most feasible approach to measure and monitor snow cover change. Available for the Northern and Western areas of CONUS for Landsat data acquired 1984–present, fSCA products provide per-pixel fractional snow cover maps that indicate the percentage of a pixel covered by snow. 

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details

fSCA Statistics

fSCA mean snow cover fraction and clear pixel count statistics provide information for unique time steps for 1984–present. These time steps include 5-year date ranges and the entire ARD stack period. Each fSCA statistic package contains monthly (entire ARD stack only), annual, and mean annual viewable or ground snow cover statistics files for each unique time step, over a single tile location.

Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Dynamic Surface Water Extent, Burned Area, and Fractional Snow Covered Area products can be downloaded from EarthExplorer (EE). On EE’s Data Set tab, the products are located under the Landsat category, and listed in the Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Science Products subcategory.

More information about Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Science Products can be found on the following webpages:

• https://www.usgs.gov/landsat-missions/landsat-collection-2-level-3-dynamic-surface-water-extent-science-product
• https://www.usgs.gov/landsat-missions/landsat-collection-2-level-3-burned-area-science-product
• https://www.usgs.gov/landsat-missions/landsat-collection-2-level-3-fractional-snow-covered-area-science-product

Users are encouraged to contact USGS Customer Services with any questions about Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Science Products.

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