Status of worldwide Landsat archive

In cooperation with the International Landsat community, and through the Landsat Technical Working Group (LTWG), NOAA is assembling information about the status of the Worldwide Landsat Archive. During LTWG 9, member nations agreed to participate in a survey of International Landsat data holding and of their archive experiences with Landsat data. The goal of the effort was two-fold; one, to document the Landsat archive to date, and, two, to ensure that specific nations' experience with long-term Landsat archival problems were available to others. The survey requested details such as amount of data held, the format of the archive holdings by Spacecraft/Sensor, and acquisition years; the estimated costs to accumulated process, and replace the data (if necessary); the storage space required, and any member nation's plans that would establish the insurance of continuing quality.

As a group, the LTWG nations are concerned about the characteristics and reliability of long-term magnetic media storage. Each nation's experience with older data retrieval is solicited in the survey. This information will allow nations to anticipate and plan for required changes to their archival holdings.

Also solicited were reports of any upgrades to a nation's archival system that are currently planned and all results of attempts to reduce archive holdings including methodology, current status, and the planned access rates and product support that are anticipated for responding to future archival usage.