April 22, 2024
NASA’s Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 project is a groundbreaking initiative that combines data from Landsats 8 & 9 with the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2A & 2B satellites.
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April 30, 2024
More water is taken from the Colorado River than it has to give. Detailed water use accounting aided by Landsat was recently published in Richter et al., 2024.
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April 29, 2024
A new Landsat and Sentinel-2 based intertidal data product for the Australian continent was released this month by Digital Earth Australia.
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April 16, 2024
Expanding OpenET Across Amazon Basin
Source: Rachel Hoover, NASA Communications
OpenET uses an open science approach to provide satellite-based information on water consumption in areas as small as a quarter of an acre and at daily, monthly, and yearly intervals.
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“This is really an exciting time for Landsat polar science, a new era so to speak. With Landsat Next on the horizon, the LEAP special request program and its observations of Earth’s polar regions—and the global cryospheric state more broadly—can only be expected to grow in impact and relevance.”
— Christopher Crawford, USGS Landsat Project Scientist and Data Acquisition Lead April 2, 2024
Scenes from the Polar Night
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April 25, 2024
Outreach specialists from the Landsat Communications and Public Engagement team participated in community engagement efforts at the Land Cover Land Use Change meeting.
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April 1, 2024
A select panel of STELLA users discussed their experiences using the DIY handheld spectrometer during the spring webinar.
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“The spectrum of observations will be more finely divided with the next Landsat satellites; that will allow for even greater and more precise differentiation of the types of land cover on the surface of Earth.”
— Jim Irons, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Emeritus
April 18, 2024
“The Earth's Transformation in Satellite Images,” BBC video
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PUBLICATION SPOTLIGHT
Ghost Roads and the Destruction of Asia-Pacific Tropical Forests
| Engert et al., 2024
Using Google Earth and 7,000 hours of labor from 200+ trained volunteers, researchers have mapped previously uncharted "ghost roads" in Borneo, Sumatra, and New Guinea, nearly doubling the road extent previously found in Open Street Map. Landsat's long data record enabled the research team to establish that deforestation most often spikes just after roads are created. Protected areas were likely to experience deforestation as well if roads were constructed within their boundaries. This suggests an important role for road suppression if those parcels are to remain protective. The authors call for the development of viable AI-based road-mapping tools that can match the still-superior performance of human eyes to extend their ghost road map worldwide.
|  | Road construction nearly always preceded deforestation in the analysis of Asia-Pacific tropical forests conducted by Engert et al., 2024. | |  |
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Upcoming Outreach Events
The Landsat Communications and Public Engagement Team will be at the following events in May 2024:
NASA Biodiversity and Ecological Conservation Team Meeting
May 7-9, 2024
Hotel Silver Spring
Silver Spring, MD
Eyes on Earth: Ag on the Hill
May 16, 2024
Rayburn Building
Washington D.C.
Odyssey of the Mind
May 21-24, 2024
Iowa State University
Ames, IA
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| Captured moments from Earth Day 2024 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. |
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April 25, 2024
Amid prolonged drought, wet spring weather flooded marshes and greened vegetation in southern Spain.
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April 20, 2014
A powerful storm system battered major cities in the Arabian Peninsula.
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April 6, 2024
Signs of structural weaknesses may signal a shift in this Antarctic ice shelf’s stability.
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April 4, 2024
The latest fissure eruption on Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula was the largest of four recent bouts of activity near the town of Grindavík.
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“…Landsat products can be used—and are necessary—for quantifying and summarizing water use volumes at spatial scales that are relevant for water resource studies in water-limited regions.”
— Justin Huntington, Desert Research Institute hydrologist
April 30, 2024
Meat of the Matter: Colorado River Over-Consumed
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An April 28, Landsat-based @nasaearth reel featuring Massachusetts's Cape Code has accumulated over 300k views.
In an animated time series of three decades of Landsat images (1984-2020), Cape Cod can be seen shifting and changing.
Landsat data allow scientists to measure rates of erosion and track how the shoreline has shifted during the past four decades.
+ Get reel
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