Eyes on Earth

Every pixel has a story. At least that’s how land remote sensing scientist Jo Horton sees it. The new Annual National Land Cover Database (NLCD) was just released in October 2024. NLCD is widely used for land cover and change research in the U.S. That’s why the Reference and Validation team provides accuracy metrics to users, and this work allows EROS to move land cover mapping science forward...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk to ground station technicians to find out how Landsat satellite data gets from the spacecraft to EROS and then to the archive. We see what it’s like in EROS’s Landsat operations room and what the technicians do before, during, and after a Landsat pass. The task of making sure those bits of data make their way to the archive so it can be used for land...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we mingle at the 2024 EROS Fall Poster Session. A poster session is essentially a way for scientists to share their work with their colleagues in a public forum. About 30 posters were on display in the EROS atrium from EROS staff and several students from South Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota. We talked to a few of them to get quick...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the incredible career of Landsat 7, which collected science imagery of the Earth for nearly 25 years. The Flight Operations Team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and engineers at EROS work together to collect imagery, send commands to the satellite, and keep it healthy. After over 133,000 orbits and 3.3 million images collected, Landsat 7 stopped...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the latest release of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). More than just a map, NLCD is a stack of maps—a database. It has long been the foundational land cover source for scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers across the United States, and now the next generation of USGS land cover mapping is here. This new release includes land...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools (LANDFIRE) project, which is commemorating its 20th year of providing geospatial data to support natural resource management and wildland fire planning. LANDFIRE brings a lot of data together, over 30 data products, into one place. The publicly available, consistent data maps disturbance to...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk to forest ecologist Jim Lutz about the effort to map fires in Utah. Fire research in the West is dominated by the study of large fires, but the forests in Utah are different. Utah typically does not have a lot of large fires as other western states do. So to better understand the differences that the specific Utah vegetation types have in their response to...

This Eyes on Earth episode is the third in our series on using Landsat for coastal studies. We talk to physical geographer Jeff Danielson about bathymetry and how it is critical for coastal modeling. Bathymetry captures the shape of underwater topography, and satellite-derived bathymetry helps fill in areas where there are data gaps. Even though Landsat was designed to image land, it’s a big part...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talked with some of the interns who worked at EROS this summer. They shared their experiences learning about the cloud, AI, wildland fire research, terrestrial lidar scanning, and more. The common theme among them was recognizing the value of the EROS mission and noticing the passion their co-workers demonstrated in their work. They also shared advice for...

This episode of Eyes on Earth is the second in a series about how Landsat is helping researchers study coastal changes. The first one was about mapping changes to beaches in California and using Landsat to create models to predict how the coastline may change in the future because of sea level rise and coastal erosion. For this episode, we talk with Robbi Bishop-Taylor, coastal Earth observation...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we begin a series on Landsat’s usefulness in coastal studies. First, we talk with Sean Vitousek, a USGS research oceanographer, about changes to beaches in California and how he is using Landsat and other data to create models that can predict how the coastline may change in the future because of sea level rise and coastal erosion. Landsat’s global reach stretches...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with Kristi Kline about the constant changes and innovations that have been needed at EROS to keep up with changes in computer tech and data processing. Kline has been a part of helping to implement these changes over the past 27 years and is now retiring at the end of May 2024. We discuss her favorite memories like attending the Landsat 8 launch, and...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with several people involved with the next Landsat mission, targeted for launch around 2030. While that may seem like a ways into the future, it takes a lot of work to prepare for such a big mission. In Part 2 of this two-part series on Landsat Next, we’ll hear about what needs to be done before launch to prepare the ground system, data processing and data...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with several people involved with the next Landsat mission. In Part 1, we’ll hear about how different Landsat Next will be from previous Landsat missions and how its additional spectral bands, higher resolution and 6-day revisit will benefit science and society. Addressing the needs of the Landsat user community was a high priority in developing the...

Landsat has documented changes all over the world for over 50 years. Changes in polar regions are happening especially rapidly. But it’s dark in polar regions much of the time. Therefore, a new acquisition scheme is adding more imagery of these dark, polar regions so these changes can be studied in more detail, even in polar twilight. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about this project...

Women have been crucial to the EROS workforce from the very beginning in a variety of areas, from customer service and computers to film processing and administration. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we’re highlighting the science work that women have been part of, which includes plenty of variety on its own, including the mapping of landscapes and wildfire burn severities and monitoring water...

Typically, we use Landsat data to study changes on the land—you know, Landsat. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn how satellite images and pixels of water, along with actual water samples, are helpful in determining the productivity of lakes across the United States. We talk with Mendenhall Fellow and Research Geographer Dr. Michael Meyer about a recently released, freely accessible...

Terry Sohl helped develop the National Land Cover Database, NLCD, when he first arrived, and now he’s overseeing significant improvements to the widely used product. But that’s just one part of his new role. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, Sohl provides an overview of the science efforts at EROS and how artificial intelligence and machine learning help scientists focus more on the work that...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we aim to separate science fiction from science fact when it comes to how Landsat satellites and the EROS Center are portrayed in popular media. To do that, we consulted experts on a range of potential uses, including military, heat signatures, paleontology, and forests.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we spoke with Mikael Hiestand, a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow. Using algorithms developed at EROS, Mikael is working on near-term drought forecasting. With synthetic Landsat data, he found that predicting evapotranspiration could be used as a means of drought prediction and monitoring. The Mendenhall Fellowship allows people who have just completed their PhD an...

First responders need reliable, accurate mapping capabilities as quickly as possible in the wake of a disaster—and they don’t have time to download and organize it. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn how the USGS Geospatial Information Response Team draws data from multiple sources to show what an area looked like before an event as well as after, creating accessible, usable maps and data...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from several EROS staff members and university graduate students who took part in our Fall Poster Session. Lively conversations filled the EROS atrium during the hour-long event. Participants got to learn from one another as they shared their work. We talked to a few of them to get quick summaries of their research.

The Landsat Program is considered the gold standard for satellite Earth-observation imagery. To keep it that way, the USGS EROS Flight Operations Team continually monitors the flight paths of the Landsat satellites to make sure they stay at a consistent 705-kilometer altitude. That means frequently speeding it up to counter the effects of atmospheric drag. But that’s not all. The team accounts for...

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) has a long history as the definitive U.S. land cover product. But the newer Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) effort takes a longer look back in time. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn how the two projects at EROS, both based on 30-meter resolution Landsat satellite data, are merging to bring the strengths of each to future...

Several decades ago, USGS EROS employees were pioneers in land cover mapping—turning satellite imagery into a record of what covers the land, from farmland to forest to urban areas. National and global datasets with a variety of uses resulted from these efforts. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we explore some of this history, along with how it benefited people at the time and the mapping efforts...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we focus on Alaska. Rich in wildlife and natural resources, not to mention its sheer size, Alaska has long been a source of fascination for remote sensing scientists. But it is also a source of frustration, with frequent cloud and snow cover and months of darkness each year. Three EROS researchers well versed in interpreting Landsat imagery from Alaska shared...

At the USGS EROS 50 th anniversary events on August 17-19, 2023, a special effort was made to include alumni who had worked at the center, especially those from the earliest years of EROS’ existence. This episode of Eyes on Earth is the second to highlight their stories, with emphasis on science, technology, and EROS’ international outlook.

At the USGS EROS 50 th anniversary events on August 17-19, 2023, a special effort was made to include alumni who had worked at the center, especially those from the earliest years of EROS’ existence. This episode of Eyes on Earth highlights their stories, with emphasis on EROS’ history and its dedicated employees.

LANDFIRE, short for Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools, is a key national data source for the management of wildfires, management of the plant materials that fuel fires, and planning for prescribed fires across all 50 states and the U.S. territories. The data products, partly derived from satellite imagery, are generated at EROS through a partnership between the Department of...

EROS Center Director Pete Doucette has been at EROS for a fairly short stretch of the center’s 50-year history, but his passion for the mission of EROS and its opportunities in the future are clear in this episode of Eyes on Earth. He shares the historic event he would have enjoyed being part of in the past, and he gives insights about remote sensing work at EROS going forward.

As USGS EROS turns 50 this month, our Eyes on Earth podcast also marks a big moment: Episode 100. To celebrate, we bring together some treasured moments from previous episodes in which people inside and outside of EROS share their thoughts on EROS and its role in the world of remote sensing, including as keeper of all Landsat satellite data.

EROS has a long history of reaching out to universities to welcome interns who can both contribute to the center and gain valuable skills and experience. A good number of them went on to spend their careers at EROS, some for more than three decades. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, these interns who stayed emphasized above all the mission—observing Earth remotely, recording the changes and...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the 50-year history of EROS efforts to preserve the environment and conserve energy. EROS was born in the ’70s, the same decade as Earth Day, the EPA, and the oil crisis. Environmentally conscious decisions implemented by both the EROS Center and the employee association include reclaiming silver from photo processing, using solar panels to heat the...

Satellites capture an incredible variety of views of Earth. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with the three engineers at USGS EROS who started the USGS Earth As Art project. The Earth As Art origin story is an example of the initiative and creativity of EROS staff. This stunningly visual product grabs the public’s attention—and then leads to conversations about the value of remote sensing...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with Peder Nelson about generational science and the responsibility we have to future generations to study our changing planet. It takes more than just data to make sense of land change. And while remote sensing scientists work with the deep archive of Landsat and other land data available from the USGS EROS Center, everyone can put themselves on the...

The members of the five-year Landsat Science Teams, led jointly by the USGS and NASA with a strong tie to EROS, have brought a wide breadth of expertise, backgrounds and geographic locations to the table. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn how members have explored strategies for the effective use of archived Landsat data and integration of future data, and how they have helped identify...

South Dakota State University opened its Remote Sensing Institute even before the launch of Landsat 1 and the selection of South Dakota as the location for EROS. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about some of the collaborations that SDSU and EROS have both benefited from, including research projects centered on Landsat and other data sources, instrument calibration and validation, and...

Working with film has always been part of EROS’ 50-year history. How did EROS end up with an extensive film archive, and how are we making that data available to users? In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the custom scanners built in-house from discarded parts to digitally capture historical aerial photos and declassified spy satellite images. These Phoenix systems have scanned...

The Don Lee Kulow Library has been supporting scientific research at EROS since before the facility opened its doors in 1973. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, librarian Carol Deering explains how, rather than becoming obsolete with the advent of instant access to online journals, libraries are even more crucial for the discovery of previous studies and for gauging the reach and real-world effects...

AmericaView aims to advance Earth observation education through a network of programs based at universities in more than 40 states. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about AmericaView’s goals and how AmericaView and its member states explain remote sensing efforts to society in a variety of ways, including outreach to students who range from elementary to graduate school. We also give...

Originally called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, Landsat 8 launched on February 11, 2013. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the 10^th^ anniversary of Landsat 8 being in orbit and its value to the remote sensing community. While we cannot predict the future, it does look promising that Landsat 8 can sustain that continuity for more years to come.

When the snow gets deep and the wind blows, it can be challenging for workers to travel to the USGS EROS Center, located several miles north of Sioux Falls, SD, on what used to be farmland. Most can telecommute these days, but in this episode of Eyes on Earth, we discover how essential employees ensure there is in-person continuous monitoring of Landsat ground station operations during winter...

Designed to last three years, Landsat 5 was launched in 1984 and transmitted data until the launch of Landsat 8 in 2013. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about some of the challenges—and adrenaline rushes—Landsat 5 gave the flight operations team as it aged, as well as the fondness our two guests came to have for the satellite’s unique personality and the whole team as they served on it...

Designed to last three years, Landsat 5 launched in 1984 and transmitted data until the launch of Landsat 8 in 2013. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about the significance of this satellite, which set a Guinness World Record for “Longest Operating Earth Observation Satellite.” Our two guests served on the flight operations team in the satellite’s twilight years and describe its...

The USGS EROS Center is the home of the Landsat satellite archive. This data center and science center located on a former farm near Sioux Falls, SD, is one of the largest civilian archives of land imaging in the world. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we discuss what visitors to EROS will learn on a tour, including examples of land change seen by Landsat and why EROS is located where it is. Find...

Landsat 7’s nominal science mission ended in April 2022 after nearly 23 years of acquiring Earth imagery from 705 kilometers above the Earth. Landsat 7 is now in an extended science mission after having its orbit lowered by about 8 kilometers to make way for Landsat 9. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we discuss why Landsat 7 continues to collect imagery, the quality of the extended science...

When disaster strikes, near-real-time images of its effects can be invaluable. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about how a newly developed system using the Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 dataset and artificial intelligence was put to the test when Hurricane Ian tore through Florida in late September 2022. By comparing pre-storm and post-storm imagery, the system quickly flagged anomalies...

ECOSTRESS, or ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station, data provides variables related to plant water stress, including evapotranspiration, evaporative stress index and water use efficiency. The NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) at EROS provides storage and distribution of ECOSTRESS data. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we take a look at...

The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation, or GEDI, instrument on the International Space Station acquires lidar waveforms to observe the Earth’s surface in 3D. The GEDI lidar measures the height and density of objects, so it provides information such as surface elevation and tree canopy height and cover. The NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) at EROS provides...

The Landsat satellites have been collecting Earth imagery for more than 50 years. A key piece of equipment that moves the data from the spacecraft to the archive so researchers can use it is the antenna at the EROS Center. The antenna and its radome have a fascinating history of their own that adds to the overall Landsat story. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we go on location to learn about how...

ECOSTRESS, which stands for the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station, collects land surface temperatures in an effort to answer questions about plants’ use of water. The NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) at EROS has provided storage and distribution of ECOSTRESS data for four years now and counting. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we...

The Landsat archive at EROS contains an unparalleled 50 years of Earth observation data. But with earlier technologies, some Landsat scenes were collected and stored only by international ground receiving stations rather than in the central archive at EROS. More than 10 years ago, to help make that far-flung data available to scientists interested in land change over time, the Landsat Global...

Government officials and scientists had high hopes for Landsat when the first experimental satellite launched July 23, 1972. Those hopes were soon realized when imagery came back depicting features never before seen. Since then, an archive of imagery surpassing 10 million scenes has amassed at EROS, collected from eight different Landsat satellites. Agencies, scientists, researchers, and data...

We don't need a scientist to tell us that city streets catch and hold heat. Anyone who's walked barefoot from a parking lot to a beach can tell you that. What scientists can help us understand, particularly scientists who work with spaceborne, remotely sensed data, is just how big a difference there is between cities and the countryside. That gap is sometimes referred to as the urban heat island...

Spaceborne sensors orbit hundreds of miles over our heads. Even the most advanced among them struggle to capture high-resolution imagery of individual human beings. Mosquitos, of course, are far smaller than we are. Clearly, sensors on a satellite or space station can’t see them. Even so, these sensors can gather a host of information that helps to understand the movements and behaviors of these...

Clouds of dust kicked up in places like the Sahara can travel thousands of miles across the planet. We can see those clouds in satellite imagery, but we don’t typically know much about the composition of that dust. That’s a huge blind spot, because those unknown characteristics—such as the particles’ lightness or darkness—have an impact on what they do. The warming and cooling of the atmosphere...

When the first Landsat satellite launched 50 years ago, it was the only game in town in terms of civilian land remote sensing. In the years that followed, a host of satellites have launched to serve similar purposes. But that data doesn't always play well together. Subtle differences between the measurements taken by satellites make it difficult to do apples-to-apples comparisons of land change...

Some plants are simply better at making use of their water supply than others. More efficient plants can capture more carbon with less water, which has implications for carbon sequestration and ultimately for climate change modeling. In other words, the more we understand about water use efficiency, the more reliable our climate change models can be. And the only way to measure efficiency at the...

The boreal forest, or taiga, stretches across nearly 5.7 million square miles in the northern latitudes. That’s nearly a quarter of all forested lands in the world. This sprawling biome also happens to be one of the most rapidly shifting in the face of climate change. Many studies have suggested that the taiga tree line is moving northward as temperatures warm worldwide, edging itself into the...

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we zero in on the use of USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) products to examine the effects of drought on California’s Blue Oaks. LCMAP datasets are built from Landsat data and reveal the land cover and change of every pixel in the conterminous United States, dating back to 1985. In this case, LCMAP helped identify areas of declines...

Summary: The Earth observation data archived here have plenty of value to the study of aquatic ecosystems. Landsat satellites can capture harmful algal blooms, for example. Spaceborne sensors can also record land surface temperatures, and that includes water surfaces. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear about how a sensor called ECOSTRESS can be used to measure water temperatures at...

Land change is a constant. Even land areas that see little major change can see disruptions from storms, heat waves, wildfires, or invasive species. But major changes aren't uncommon, either. Each year in the U.S., farm fields become tracts of suburban homes, wetlands become more permanent bodies of water, and shrublands burn to be replaced with grasslands. A team of researchers with the USGS Land...

The sturdy root systems of mangrove forests act as buffer zones along the coastlines of some of the planet’s most vulnerable communities, protecting lives, ecosystems and property from the rigors of hurricanes and tsunamis. The dual stressors of climate change and man-made changes to the environment such as offshore aquaculture have damaged these critical buffer zones in recent years. Remote...

If you want to know how much rain fell yesterday, you can catch it and measure it. Water vapor? That's not so easy. Which is a problem if you want to know how quickly that rate is returning to the atmosphere. Water vapor is the single largest part of the water budget, but without space-based observations, it would be all but impossible to measure at wide scale. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we...

The rangelands of the western United States are changing more quickly than many other parts of the lower 48. Miles upon miles of the area or semi-arid landscapes in states like Idaho, Montana and Nevada are now carpeted by fire fueling invasive grasses. Cheatgrass is the most prevalent, which is troublesome for several reasons. First off, it greens up and browns down really quickly, leaving a...

Satellites like Landsat are valuable for mapping fire perimeters and for monitoring trends in burn severity or in post-fire recovery. Satellites can cover wide areas with a single pass, whereas helicopter, drone, or airplane fire line mapping can take hours. But civilian satellites with moderate resolution typically don't get imagery for the entire planet every day, and every day counts when large...

Outbreaks of native bark beetles can lead to conspicuous changes in a forest landscape. They’ve been present for thousands of years with occasional outbreaks, but there’s a lot we don’t yet understand about them. Exactly when and where have outbreaks occurred? How severe were they? What happened to the forest afterward? How will a warming climate influence outbreaks? On this episode of Eyes on...

Fires can be destructive or healthy for a landscape—often both. Fires have grown larger and more destructive in recent years, though, thanks to human activity, climate change, and a host of other factors. Satellite data helps us to map and monitor fire activity, but the study of post-fire plant life using remote sensing data goes further than fire mapping. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear...

For our third and final episode of Eyes on Earth from the September launch of Landsat 9, we hear from Virginia Norwood. She blazed a trail for women in remote sensing in the 1960s and 70s while working for Hughes Aircraft, a contractor for NASA. Norwood is known as the “Mother of Landsat” for her design of the Multispectral Scanner, or MSS, the sensor used to image the Earth’s surface by early...

Hundreds of scientists, officials, international representatives, and others witnessed the launch of Landsat 9 on September 27, 2021, from a handful of viewing sites around Santa Barbara County, California. Their interests were as varied as their backgrounds, but the new satellite’s extension of the Landsat program’s invaluable 50-year record of Earth observations was top of mind for the...

Landsat 9 launched into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Monday, September 27, 2021, to carry on the legacy of a nearly 50-year record of continuous Earth observation that began in 1972. The days leading up to the event saw guests from around the world descend upon Santa Barbara County in California to watch the historic event take place. Over the next few weeks, we’ll bring you some of...

The launch of Landsat 9 in September of 2021 represents a milestone for a joint USGS/NASA program that stretches back nearly 50 years. Landsat 9 will continue the legacy of unbroken, repeat Earth observations and contribute to our understanding of a changing planet. The primary USGS roles for Landsat satellites, which are built and launched by NASA, are to operate the ground system, process and...

Satellite imagery is everywhere. We see it on TV news and weather coverage, in our Twitter and Facebook feeds, and on our phones’ mapping apps. The data behind that imagery is nothing like a screenshot, though. It’s comprised of tiny packets of data, broken down from huge files and digitally manipulated to resemble the surface of the Earth, a swirling storm system or a map of urban growth. Cloud...

The Great Lakes represent roughly 20% of the surface freshwater in the world and 90% in the United States. The Great Lakes Basin supports more than 30 million people in the U.S. and Canada and 3,500 plant and animal species. The region faces threats that range from climate change and invasive species to pollution and development. Identifying and addressing those threats can be a daunting task, but...

Mapping land cover in the United States in the present isn’t a simple job, but satellites like Landsat make it possible. Mapping conditions in the pre-satellite era, which the LANDFIRE program does through its Biophysical Settings (BpS) GIS data products, is a far trickier proposition. BpS essentially offer a spatially-explicit map of pre-Colonial land cover in the U.S., alongside models that help...

Urban heat islands occur in areas containing more impervious surfaces and fewer natural environments. The day and night surface temperature is higher in urban heat islands than in surrounding areas. During heat waves, this can lead to greater numbers of heat-related illnesses and deaths. Landsat satellites collect data on surface temperature and vegetative change that can help cities mitigate the...

The National Land Cover Database, or NLCD, was the first and remains the most well-known set of satellite-based land cover mapping products released by EROS. It sorts the each 30-by-30-meter plot of land in the United States into a land cover class, such as cropland, pasture, high-intensity developed, deciduous forest, and the like. It also includes information on impervious urban surfaces, forest...

Mapping fire perimeters is important work. It guides post-fire restoration efforts, fire mitigation strategies, and helps track of trends in burn severity over time. In the past, many of Canada’s fire agencies relied heavily on techniques like sketch mapping, which estimate burned area without exact measurements. In the pre-satellite era, pilots would sometimes fly over the edge of a fire while a...

The invasive species hemlock woolly adelgid is a threat to eastern hemlocks, filling some southeastern U.S. forests with what are called “gray ghosts” of the trees. Until recently, the insect had stayed in the southern part New York, but late last summer, an infestation was discovered in the Adirondacks. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, a New York university researcher talks about his effort to...

The fire science community is always on the lookout for the freshest satellite-derived fire disturbance maps. Aiming to meet those needs, the multi-agency partnership known as LANDFIRE has just released an update that adds three new years of disturbances across the U.S. to its 20-plus layers of GIS data. LANDFIRE 2019 Limited is a step toward annual updates for the program, which is relied upon...

About 15 million people rely on the Delaware River Basin for drinking water, including residents of Philadelphia, PA, Camden, NJ, and Wilmington, DE. What might happen to the water supply if climate change and population growth continue unabated? How might that impact land cover and land use patterns? Those are the kinds of questions scientists at EROS looked to answer in a dataset built from...

Teams at the USGS EROS Center have completed fire atlases for nine National Parks across the U.S. Each atlas defines the size and severity of each fire in each park since 1984, including fires too small to be mapped by other programs. Yellowstone National Park has had nearly 100 fires, for example, ranging from a few acres to thousands of acres. The project used data from Landsat for earlier years...

It’s possible to map vegetation type with Landsat, but getting the maps right requires more than satellites alone. The teams behind LANDFIRE use an extensive network of ground control points to check their work, thereby bolstering the reliability and utility of their multi-layer GIS product suite. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we meet scientist Karen Schleeweis, who tells us about LANDFIRE’s...

Ladies of Landsat aims to help women and other underrepresented groups feel welcomed and supported in the field of remote sensing. The Twitter group has grown to 5,700 members and counting since Dr. Kate Fickas started it in 2018 during a Landsat Science Team meeting at EROS. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about the ambitions and actions of the group, why a sense of community is so...

Deforestation is a significant concern for many parts of the globe, particularly in places like the rainforests of the Amazon or the Congo. Scientists, governments, and non-governmental organizations turn to satellite data to track deforestation, as well as to set targets for improvement. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from a remote sensing specialist with the U.S. Forest Service who...

Landsat satellites have monitoring the Earth’s surface for nearly 50 years, providing critical information for countless areas of study and real-world applications. But with observations only collected every 8-16 days, there are limits to what can be tracked. On today’s episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear about a soon-to-be-released data product that merges Landsat with data from the European Space...

Dr. Alan Belward has spent a lot of time thinking about the planet’s surface water. The former Landsat Science Team member uses satellite data to track changes to lakes, rivers, and streams, and recently published a book that uses Landsat data to tell some of those stories. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear about some of the surprising things Belward and his team learned about how surface...

The St. Mary and Milk Rivers cross the U.S. and Canadian border and supply water to both countries. Managing that resource in the interest of both nations is a matter of international collaboration and cooperation, and Landsat data is helping offer objective information on water use. On today’s episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from Roy Sando of the USGS, who’s working with EROS experts and the...

The extensive rangelands across the Western United States are threatened by invasive grasses, climate change, and altered fire regimes that can disturb the landscape. The largely semi-arid lands are also important for the survival of species that need undisturbed sagebrush ecosystems to thrive. But most satellite-based land cover datasets don’t offer the kind of detail needed to track small but...

Albedo—the amount of incoming solar radiation reflected into space from the Earth’s surface—is a key measurement for surface temperatures and plant productivity. It also factors into weather forecasting and climate modeling. Landsat Science Team member Dr. Crystal Schaaf works with graduate and postdoctoral students to measure albedo using satellite data from the University of Massachusetts-Boston...

Landsat data is more useful today than at any other point in its nearly 50-year history. The USGS Collections strategy is a major reason why. Landsat Collections align and correct satellite acquisitions from 1972 through the present to make the data easier to work with through time. The USGS has now released Collection 2, an upgrade that improves geometric accuracy, improves interoperability with...

Brazil is a fascinating study in water use. Brazil uses roughly 72 percent of its water for irrigated agriculture, and its herds of cattle, pigs and poultry are among the largest in the world. Water management teams from that country’s National Water Agency have worked in recent years with researchers from the USGS EROS Center to learn how to map, and therefore more effectively manage, the South...

In the past, remote sensing scientists looked for change on the Earth’s surface primarily by comparing one Landsat image to another. Today, open access to Landsat data, high-performance and cloud computing capabilities and sophisticated algorithms can be used to scan the entirety of the archive for change, enabling researchers to learn more about how the landscape shifts over time. On this episode...

The Green Revolution leaned on fertilizers, drought-resistant seeds and other modern innovations to boost agricultural production across much of the planet in the second half of the 20th Century. But many of those innovations never reached West Africa, partially because the lack of social safety nets and crop insurance made such investments too risky. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear...

When a disaster like a hurricane, flood or major wildfire hits a remote part of the world, the International Charter Space and Natural Disasters springs into action. The Charter’s members collect and distribute satellite-derived data that documents the damage, as well as derived products like as fire perimeter or structural damage maps – all at no cost to national emergency management agencies. In...

Evapotranspiration is the process by which water transpires from the leaves and stems of plants and evaporates from the Earth’s surface. ET is an important metric for managing water use, but data availability has long been an issue. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about OpenET, a bold initiative whose goal is to improve water management by making that water consumption data more easily...

Today, the world is awash in remotely sensed data. Satellites launched by countries and commercial companies circle the planet collecting data every day. Accessing data from multiple agencies and plaforms and turning it into useful analytics can be a daunting and complex endeavor, however. On today's episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from the founder of the non-profit Radient Earth Foundation...

Mapping land cover across the United States using Landsat satellite data is a difficult, time-intensive job, but there are jobs far larger. Matt Hansen, a Maryland-based professor and member of the Landsat Science Team focuses his efforts on mapping land cover and change on a global scale. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from Matt on how he and his team use the Landsat archive to map...

Calibration teams at the USGS EROS Center use a variety of methods to make sure the data collected by Landsat satellites are an accurate representation of the Earth’s surface. They’re constantly comparing new imagery to old, tweaking algorithms to correct issues that might emerge, and using unchanging Earth surface sites and on-the-ground readings to check for consistency. Since the launch of...

Just recently, in mid-July, the flight operations team charged with keeping the Landsat 7 satellite running smoothly achieved a major milestone. They have gone 8 straight years now without an operator error. Considering that the team is operating a machine that costs hundreds of millions of dollars and flies at more than 17,000 miles per hour, avoiding any kind or operator error for 8 years is a...

In the days before LANDFIRE, fire scientists often struggled to find the vegetation and fuels data they needed to map the path of fires, keep firefighters safe, and to model fire recovery. The dizzying array of data points found in the map layers of the LANDFIRE product suite—from hundreds of vegetation classes to tree canopy height and bulk to fuel potential and beyond—became indispensable upon...

The U.S. Geological Survey took a bold step toward documenting change across the landscape with the launch of the first Landsat satellite in 1972. Since then, it’s collected nearly five decades of imagery. But it takes more than just imagery to understand change. It takes time, effort—and serious computing horsepower. The USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) initiative...

Remote sensing is not an especially venerable scientific discipline, at least in comparison to fields like biology, chemistry or medicine. From its beginnings with aerial photography in the 1920s through the initial stages of satellite-based land imaging in the early 1970s, few peer-reviewed publications were available for scientists to share their ideas and improve their methods. The rise of...

The continent of Australia experienced some of the most devastating wildfires in its history in late 2019 and early 2020. Remote sensing scientists in Australia, who collaborate closely with EROS, relied on satellites like Landsat to help assess and monitor the damage. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from one of our Australian partners on the value of satellite imagery before, during...

Between them, Landsats 7 and 8 image the entire land surface of Earth every eight days. The USGS orbiters are just two of many Earth observing satellites flying at the same altitude and collecting data at the same time of day. Other “constellations” of satellites gather other kinds of data, traveling one after the other like cars on a train to collect information that can be used independently or...

Sea levels are rising globally. In some places, it is rising more than others, threatening communities and people as storm surges reach further inland and inundate more land. Landsat satellites used with other Earth-observing platforms enable EROS scientists to model the elevation of coastal shores, giving decision makers valuable information to use in preparing for the rising seas. In this...

The U.S. has plenty of data on wildfire risk. There are local and regional risk assessments, complex datasets like LANDFIRE and tracking tools like the EROS Fire Danger Monitor, as well as a host of resources and research projects devoted to the subject. But much of that information is steeped in the language of fire science and difficult to comprehend for those outside it. In this episode of Eyes...

Landsat satellites offer a wealth of information to scientists studying ecosystem health and recovery. Data products derived from Landsat open even more areas of inquiry. Landsat Burned Area products, for example, can help researchers identify previously unknown fires that took place from 1984 through the present. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk to one of the scientists behind that...

The Mendenhall Program offers a range of two-year post-doctoral research fellowships within the U.S. Geological Survey. Heather Tollerud took advantage of the program in 2015 to study drought and land cover at the USGS EROS Center, and has since become a key player in the Center’s innovative Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) initiative. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we...

In the West African nation of Ghana, tropical forests are more than landscape. They are woven into language, custom, and culture. They are also the source of timber for home heating and industry, as well as barriers to agricultural production. Those are just a few of the reasons why deforestation has come alongside the nation’s rapid population growth. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, an EROS...

The Arctic is changing at a more rapid rate than the rest of the planet. Some of the most significant changes are tied to the thawing of near-surface permafrost, the layers of frozen soil containing vast stocks of stored carbon. Scientists at EROS have used remote sensing tools to map the extent of near-surface permafrost in Alaska, offering a baseline for further research as change continues to...

For decades, each Landsat image had a price tag – a hefty one at times, ranging from $400 to as much as $4,000. That all changed in 2008 with the enactment of an open data policy that made the entire Landsat archive available for download at no cost to the user. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with one of the architects of that policy, as well as an EROS data manager who saw the post...

Across the planet, in rural settings on uncluttered landscapes, there are satellite antennas receiving data directly from Landsat satellites as they pass 438 miles overhead at more than 17,000 miles per hour. It happens multiple times a day, in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, South Korea, and elsewhere. The International Cooperators network has 20 ground stations in 14 countries. In this...

It’s easy enough to measure rainfall, and nearly as easy to measure streamflow. Calculating the efficiency of water use through the metric of evapotranspiration (ET) – evaporation off the Earth’s surface and transpiration from the leaves of plants – is a far trickier proposal. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear how scientists use satellites like Landsat to measure ET, and how those...

Land cover and land use across the United States are the culmination of a complex web of interwoven factors: Climate, landscape types, and economic factors among them. Remotely-sensed data from satellites like Landsat and a variety of other sources are useful for documenting and monitoring land cover and land use. When used alongside other data sources, however, remote sensing data can offer a...

Scientists at EROS have spent years refining their approach to mapping burn severity using remotely-sensed data from satellites like Landsat, but Landsat comes with limitations. Landsat data cannot see the vegetation below a thick tree canopy, for example. In this episode, we learn about a project in South Dakota’s Black Hills that seeks to leverage 3D data gathered using Unmanned Aircraft Systems...

Sixty years of manned and unmanned space flight have left a cosmic junkyard circling the planet. In 2017, the U.S. government reported that it logged 308,984 close calls with space junk and issued 655 emergency-reportable alerts to satellite operators. In this episode, we learn about that debris, its potential dangers, and how Landsat flight operators keep their satellites out of harm’s way.

Summary: Scientists at EROS use tools like Landsat to produce land cover maps, which tell us if landscapes are rural or urban, cropped or forested, wetland or shrubland. Those maps help scientists at EROS and around the U.S. study the impact of changes in land use on not just landscapes, but on ecosystems, patterns of resource use, wildlife habitat, and much more. In this episode, we learn about...

A farmer at the foot of a corn stalk can tell how well the plant is faring. That same farmer might survey his entire field for crop health. But assessing the health of crops or forests at regional, national, and international scales requires remote sensing, most often via satellite. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk to Jesslyn Brown about the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)...

Each fall, EROS invites its staff scientists and area graduate students to visit for a noontime poster session. The poster sessions offer a change for those researchers to present their results to their peers and get feedback from their fellow scientists. For this episode, we’ll hear about research into biofuels, cloud-friendly Landsat data, shrubland mapping and satellite-based fire monitoring.

We tend to associate Landsat satellites with what we see on solid Earth, but they can also tell us much about the health of our inland and coastal ecosystems. Landsat can be used to monitor harmful algal blooms, for example. Eyes on Earth guest Dr. Nima Pahlevan, a Landsat Science Team member, is part of a research team that tracks algal blooms worldwide using Landsat data.

Nearly 85 million people around the world are currently considered “food insecure,” and that figure continues to grow. Remote sensing technology enables scientists to feed data into the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), which in turn can issue alerts that guide the distribution of humanitarian aid. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from an EROS climate scientist who works...

Every year, the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) uses data from satellites like Landsat to estimate crop types and crop yields in the United States. The result is the Cropland Data Layer (CDL), which offers an annual look at more than 100 crop categories across the country. In this episode, Dave Johnson with NASS discusses how Landsat can identify different crops, providing a...

EROS scientists track water availability and crop health around the world to help governments and non-profits manage resources and stave off food shortages. But EROS also teaches international scientists to track those resources themselves. In this episode, we hear about a recent training session at EROS for Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources.

How much does an Earth observation satellite weigh? How are they launched? How fast does it travel? Does Landsat have a gas tank? In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we answer some of the basic questions surrounding the satellites that define the EROS mission.

There’s a lot more than Landsat in the EROS Archive. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from a professor who’s mined satellite data collected during once-classified military missions to peer into the history of land use in Eastern Europe during the height of the Cold War.

Earth observation used to be the province of a handful of countries with satellite technology. Today, hundreds of satellites built all over the world are launched every year. This episode of Eyes on Earth talks about the explosive growth in the civilian and commercial remote sensing and EROS’ role in it.

Sorting Landsat data into an accurate and reliable record of land cover in the United States is one of the most important jobs at EROS. This episode of Eyes on Earth explores the what, how, and why of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD).

When an accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's No. 4 reactor in Ukraine on April 26, 1986, Landsat satellites were among the first to capture visual evidence of its widespread impact. This episode of Eyes on Earth outlines how the disaster focused the world's attention on the value of remote sensing.

A rundown of the history of the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, the Landsat program, and the Center's role in the observation and study of landscape change worldwide.