Audio

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.

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.

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.

 

Director of the USGS Nebraska Water Science Center, Robert Swanson, discusses how the drought of 2012 unfolded in Nebraska, the fallout, and what put this drought in a class with other major droughts during the past 100 years.

NEWSC Director Bob Swanson talks with Rachael Hoagland about the Center's foray into social media as another means to communicate water science to the public and others.

NEWSC Director Bob Swanson talks with Rachael Hoagland about the Center's foray into social media as another means to communicate water science to the public and others.

We talk with Jason Lambrecht of the Nebraska Water Science Center to talk about a common problem this time of year, ice jams.

Bob Swanson, the USGS Nebraska Water Science Center's Director, introduces you to the Nebraskast podcast series

The USGS has determined that the Bakken Formation, in North Dakota and Montana, has 25 times more technically recoverable oil than was estimated in the USGS's 1995 assessment. We sit down with USGS scientists Brenda Pierce and Rich Pollastro to learn more.