Images

This is a logo of "Image of the Week" that can be used for carousel banners. Find these videos produced by the EROS Center here: https://eros.usgs.gov/media-gallery/image-of-the-week

The surface of the Earth is always changing. Some changes like earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and landslides happen quickly and other changes, such as most erosional processes, happen slowly over time.  It’s often hard to see these changes from ground level.

This natural color Landsat 8 image of the Sacramento Valley area shows the impacts of the relentless rains that impacted the area during the end of December and into the New Year. Turbid river water, saturated fields, and rising reservoirs can be seen near Stockton and Sacramento.

Landsat 2’s first light image captured Drayton Valley in Alberta, Canada on January 24, 1975. The discovery of the Pembina oil field in 1953 contributed to explosive growth in the sparsely populated area, with an increase from 75 individuals to 2,000. The boxed pattern seen here comes from the infrastructure for the oil and gas industry.

In the right wintry conditions, an ice bridge forms between the Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait. Theoretically, this is the only place where you can walk from Russia to the United States (and vice versa), however travel between one Diomede to the other is strictly forbidden.  

Nine consecutive rainstorms have poured on California since December 26, 2022, after three years of intensive drought.

This graphic displays the millions of Landsat Level-1 downloads, from 2008 to December 2022.

View more statistics on the Landsat Project Statistics page. 

Last year was monumental for the program, including celebrating its 50-year anniversary, transitioning a fully operational Landsat 9 to the USGS team, and extending the Landsat 7 science mission. In addition to these major events, we have included an interactive map showcasing events Landsat satellites captured this year from around the world.

The Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, is only 100 miles long by 35 miles wide—about 2 ½ times as big as Rhode Island. Even though it is a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico has its own Olympic team. The largest islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands are St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John.

Isaac Anderson (National Innovation Center) preforms a pre-flight check of a UAS before a photogrammetry mission in post-fire, landslide-prone terrain in Tahoe National Forest.

A UAS flies a photogrammetry mission over recently burned landscapes in Tahoe National Forest.

Landsat 8’s first image captured the area where the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains meet in Colorado. The natural-color image shows the coniferous forest of the mountains coming down to the dormant plains. Boulder, Colorado, sits in the middle of the image.

Isaac Anderson and Liz Hyde (National Innovation Center) bring in a drone for a landing, after flying a photogrammetry mission over landslide-prone terrain recently burned in the Mosquito fire (2022).

USGS researches and remote pilots coordinate their operations during a break in the action during a photogrammetry flight campaign in post-fire terrain in Tahoe National Forest.

Rare spotting! Dueling volcanoes captured by Landsat 9 satellite. Mauna Loa's 11.3-mile-long lava flow illuminates the plume of ash in the atmosphere above. The small red spot in the lower right is Kilauea—it began erupting nine days ago. USGS Volcanoes says a dual eruption has not occurred in Hawaii since 1984, making this a rare event.

On September 28, Landsat 8 passed over Hurricane Ian, capturing its eye just before landfall. The storm's center measured 42 kilometers (26 miles) wide.

• Our topic will be "Using Google Earth Engine to Generate Monthly-to-Weekly Maps of Surface Water." The presenter will be Chris Soulard with the USGS Western Geographic Science Center. 

In 2022, President Joe Biden pardoned two turkeys, Chocolate and Chip. The two holiday birds hail from a ranch in Monroe, North Carolina.

Title page from the Federal Standards and Procedures for the National Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD), Techniques and Methods 11-A3, Fifth Edition, 2022.This document establishes Federal standards and procedures for creating the WBD as seamless and hierarchical hydrologic unit data, based on topographic and hydrologic features at a 1:24,000 scale (Alaska at 1:

Two-dimensional (2D) National Map Illustration in support of U.G. GeoFramework Initiative (USGI)

On October 2, 2022, this gap-filled Landsat 7 image captured brownish-black sediment runoff from rivers and streams on the southwest coast of Florida. These are the first Landsat images after Hurricane Ian devastated the area on Wednesday, September 28. Water runoff can carry away debris, fertilizers, metals, and other pollutants.