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SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC)

By Landsat Missions

The SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) family of specifications aim to standardize the way geospatial asset metadata is structured and queried. A "spatiotemporal asset" is any file that represents information about the Earth at a certain place and time. STAC is intentionally designed with a minimal core and flexible extension mechanism to support a broad set of use cases.

The STAC browser is a web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows users to browse and review STAC records and thumbnails for Landsat data in the cloud. 

 

STAC Server API  https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/stac-server 

The Landsat Look STAC Server API is a RESTful API built on the STAC specification, enabling programmatic access to Landsat data catalogs. The API follows RESTful principles, making it intuitive and easy to use. It uses HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE for different operations such as querying, filtering, and updating metadata.

Key Features:

  • Search: Find data assets based on criteria like keywords, spatial extent, temporal range, and properties.
  • Explore: Browse available collections and retrieve detailed information about individual data assets, including format, coverage, and metadata. The results are presented in JSON format, resembling a tree-like structure that mirrors folders and files, facilitating easy navigation and interpretation.
  • Download: Access Landsat data as Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs), designed for efficient storage and access of raster data in the cloud.

 

STAC Metadata Version Updates Occasional updates are made to STAC Metadata. Specifics about each update are listed at https://github.com/radiantearth/stac-spec/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md. 

 

STAC Samples 

Landsat Collection 2 Level-2 Scenes 

The files listed below contain STAC metadata for Level-2 Surface Reflectance and Surface Temperature data for Landsat 9 OLI/TIRS Path 95 Row 21, Acquired June 25, 2022. 

 

Landsat Collection 2 U.S. Analysis Ready Data (U.S. ARD) 

U.S. ARD STAC records include a Landsat-ARD STAC extension that includes the fields related to the tiled data, including grid_horizonal, grid_vertical, grid_region, scene_count, cloud_shadow_cover, snow_ice_cover, and fill. STAC records also provide reference to the Level-2 Albers scenes that are used in the production of each ARD tile.  

The samples listed below contain STAC metadata for Landsat 9 data of C2 ARD Alaska tile AK_H005V013 acquired July 2, 2022.  

The samples below contain STAC metadata for C2 Level-3 Burned Area, Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE), and Fractional Snow Covered Area (fSCA) science products.  

 

STAC Tutorials 

Below are some tutorials of some examples of how to use STAC: 

  • Landsat STAC Band Selection
    • This is an introduction to the basics of selecting a subset of bands over a set area of interest (AOI) and period, done by loading the desired Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs) into a Jupyter Notebook directly from the cloud.
  • Landsat STAC Direct Requester Pays Download

    • In this tutorial, we demonstrate the process of accessing Landsat data files through the STAC API and the AWS command-line tools, specifically the requester-pays functionality. Users can define their spatial and temporal parameters to query and download multiple Landsat data band files.