Mission Areas
Land Resources
Understanding a changing world and how it affects our natural resources, livelihoods, and communities. Science plays an essential role in helping communities and resource managers understand the local to global implications of change, anticipate the effects of change, prepare for change, and reduce the risks associated with decisionmaking in a changing environment.
EROS Center
The Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center is responsible for satellite operations, including Landsat, and performs image data collection, archiving, processing, and distribution.
Explore EROSLandCarbon
The biologic carbon sequestration assessment program (LandCarbon) studies ecosystem carbon cycle research topics, investigates carbon management science needs, and develops monitoring methods.
Learn MoreData and Tools
Land Resources supports the science community with its long-term observational networks and extensive databases encompassing the fields of climate history, land-use and land-cover change, and carbon and nutrient cycles.
U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit
News
Landsat, Collections Forum Updates Missions, Products, and Future Possibilities
Global Study Finds Algal Blooms Intensifying in Freshwater Lakes Worldwide
A study of global freshwater algal blooms funded in part by a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat Science Team (LST) Award has found that harmful blooms showing up more and more in various U.S. cities are intensifying in lakes worldwide as well.
International Cooperators Find Value, Collaboration in Joining Landsat Network
Landsat’s eyes in the sky captured a riveting story of rebirth across Australia’s central deserts this past spring of 2019.
Floodwaters from Queensland in north Australia killed an estimated 500,000 cattle and inundated homes before draining to the south, cascading over riverbanks and spilling across the floodplains toward the country’s lowest point at Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.
Publications
1200 years of Upper Missouri River streamflow reconstructed from tree rings
Paleohydrologic records can provide unique, long-term perspectives on streamflow variability and hydroclimate for use in water resource planning. Such long-term records can also play a key role in placing both present day events and projected future conditions into a broader context than that offered by instrumental observations. However,...
Martin, Justin; Pederson, Gregory T.; Woodhouse, Connie A.; Cook, Edward R; McCabe, Gregory; Wise, Erika K.; Erger, Patrick; Dolan, Larry; McGuire, Marketa; Gangopadhyay, Subhrendu; Chase, Katherine J.; Littell, Jeremy S.; Gray, Stephen; St. George, Scott; Friedman, Jonathan M.; Sauchyn, David J.; St. Jacques, Jannine; King, John W. Quantifying trends and uncertainty in prehistoric forest composition
Forest ecosystems in eastern North America were in flux over the last several thousand years, well before Euro-American land clearance and the 20th-century onset of anthropogenic climate change. However, the magnitude and uncertainty of prehistoric vegetation change have been difficult to quantify because of the multiple ecological, dispersal, and...
Andria Dawson; Christopher J. Paciorek; Simon Goring; Jackson, Stephen; Jason S. McLachlan; John W. Williams Rapid inundation of the southern Florida coastline despite low relative sea-level rise rates during the late-Holocene
Sediment cores from Florida Bay, Everglades National Park were examined to determine ecosystem response to relative sea-level rise (RSLR) over the Holocene. High-resolution multiproxy analysis from four sites show freshwater wetlands transitioned to mangrove environments 4–3.6 ka, followed by estuarine environments 3.4–2.8 ka, during a period of...
Jones, Miriam; Wingard, G. Lynn; Stackhouse, Bethany; Keller, Katherine; Willard, Debra A.; Marot, Marci E.; Landacre, Bryan D.; Bernhardt, Christopher E.