Banner for the Landsat Science News Digest for September 2025. In the background is a blue-green and white Landsat image and white text is in the forefront.

Watch a Braided River Redraw Its Channels 

September 3, 2025

Landsat images spanning nearly four decades reveal the shapeshifting nature of the Yarlung Zangbo River as it flows across the Tibetan Plateau. In this video, watch the planet’s highest-altitude major river's channels shift from year to year in a classic example of a braided river.


Changing Channels
 
A natural-color Landsat 8 image of the Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf) acquired on November 21 2024. In the image deep ocean is dark blue sediment surrounding an island off the coast is turquoise and bare earth is tan.

September 26, 2025

How Early Astronaut Photographs Inspired the Landsat Program



In the 1960s, seeing Earth from space was still novel. With the Gemini mission, NASA was pioneering a new era of human spaceflight—and astronaut photography—that would change Earth observation forever.
 
Video thumbnail that reads At Land's Edge Tracking Coastal Ecosystems with Landsat on two lines. In the graphic are vector drawings of a pelican and trees and water and the sun.

September 25, 2025

Landsat Keeps an Eye on the Coast



Discover how Landsat’s 50-year record of Earth helps scientists track the health of coastal ecosystems—from Florida’s mangroves to Canada’s eelgrass meadows—while providing tools like STREAM to monitor water quality and reveal changes at the edge of land and sea.
A satellite-based map shows forest loss around Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 2001 and 2024. Areas of loss appear in shades from purple (earlier years) to yellow (recent years) concentrated along the Congo River near Kisangani and around agricultural zones. Labels mark Banalia the Lindi River and the Congo River. Forested areas are dark gray.

September 22, 2025

Reshaping the Forests Around Kisangani

Source: Adam Voiland, NASA's Earth Observatory



Landsat data show decades of gradual but persistent change to forests around one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s largest cities. The Congo rainforest is second in size only to the Amazon, but decades of deforestation are reshaping the critical ecosystem.

 

“I think of Landsat as a Swiss Army knife. It is one basic set of observations that feeds an entire range of Earth science applications and research.” 



—Jeff Masek, Former NASA Landsat 9 Project Scientist, February 8, 2022

Landsat 9 Satellite Continues Half-Century of Earth Observations, BioScience
 

PUBLICATION SPOTLIGHT


A Shift from Human-Directed to Undirected Wild Land Disturbances in the USA



| Qiu et al., 2025


Between 1988 and 2022, nearly one third of the land area in the continental U.S was disturbed. For the first time ever, NASA/USGS-funded research identified the causes of those disturbances. Their findings reveal a shift away from human-directed disturbances like logging and construction toward those that humans can’t control, like wildfires. Qiu et al., 2025, published in Nature Geoscience on September 18, used nearly 35 years of data from Landsat satellites for their analyses. The research, led by former Landsat Science Team members, found that 65% of U.S. disturbances in the last four decades were directed by humans, mostly in the form of logging, agriculture, and construction. Wild-directed disturbances, on the other hand, accounted for 24% of the total disturbed areas. However, this trend is shifting: they found that human-directed disturbances are declining while wild-directed disturbances are increasing at an accelerated rate. Disturbance severity is also rising, indicating a potential shift toward more intense impacts. 
A multi-panel scientific figure showing land disturbance patterns across the continental United States from 1986 2018. The main panel displays a map of the U.S. with color-coded land disturbance types including logging (green) construction (red) agricultural disturbance (yellow) stress (brown) wind pest disturbance (orange) fire (red) and water disturbance (blue) with a timeline from 1986 to 2018. Above and to the right of the main map are 3D topographic-style plots showing disturbance area over time across different geographic transects (west-east and north-south). The bottom panels (b-h) show seven detailed subregion examples labeled as Subregions 1 to 7 each displaying different disturbance patterns and types. The figure illustrates both the geographic distribution and temporal trends of various land disturbance events across different regions of the United States over a 32 year period.

Landsat-derived map of land disturbance agents across the continental United States (1988-2022) at 30-m resolution. Panel (a) shows the spatial distribution of the most recent disturbance type per pixel, with examples of human-directed (logging, construction, agricultural) and wild-directed (stress, wind/geohazard, fire) disturbances shown in panels (b-h). Image credit: Qiu et al., 2025

Find more selected Landsat publications on our website.
 

NASA's Earth Observatory

Selected Landsat Images

September 26, 2025

Land of Many Waters and Much Sediment


The Guiana Shield’s rugged terrain shapes Guyana’s waterways, but mining has altered their clarity.
A satellite image shows the confluence of the Cuyuni Mazaruni and Essequibo rivers in central Guyana.

September 23, 2025

A Golden Moment for Boreal Forests


Hillsides in Alaska’s interior showed their changing colors ahead of the autumnal equinox.
Forested mountain ridges in Alaska are tinged with yellow in this satellite image. Some recently burned patches of forest are dark brown in color. A multi-channeled river runs roughly north-south on the left side of the image. Agricultural fields appear to the left of the river.

September 8, 2025

Alaska’s Brand New Island


A landmass that was once encased in the ice of the Alsek Glacier is now surrounded by water.
A satellite image shows Alsek Lake in August 2025. A landmass in the eastern part of the lake that was once partially encased by glacial ice is now an island. The bright blue lake has expanded to fill the voids left by retreating glaciers to the east and south.

September 6, 2025

Breaking New Ground in Mekele


Researchers are using satellites to study development patterns in this fast-growing city in Ethiopia.
A Landsat image shows Mekele from above on May 31 2025. Now the city appears as a much larger gray urban area spreading across the center of the frame with labels marking planned development to the northwest unplanned development to the southwest an industrial park to the west and an airport with a visible runway to the southeast. The surrounding terrain shows rugged reddish-brown and tan hills with sparse vegetation.
 
 

Bringing Landsat Data to Life

An artist's conception of the Landsat 8 satellite flying over the US Gulf Coast.

NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) produces animations, graphics, and videos to make Earth and space science more accessible.


The SVS Landsat collection includes imagery, time series, visualizations of Landsat technology, data products, program history, and examples of how the data support research, inform decision-makers, and benefit communities worldwide.


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