August 2024

August 6, 2024

Tundra Vegetation to Grow Taller, Greener Through 2100, NASA Study Finds

A warming climate is changing the vegetation structure of forests in the far north (Montesano et al., 2024). It’s a trend that will continue at least through the end of this century, according to NASA researchers.

Photo of the Seward Peninsula in Alaska. This area has a fast transition from tundra (foreground) to boreal forest (background, warm south facing slopes with dense white spruce).

Landsat 8 satellite image of Taipei, Taiwan.

August 28, 2024

Can LST Help Predict Earthquakes?

In Taiwan, earthquakes are linked to shallow stores of magma. New research (Chan et al., 2023) explores this connection by finding a positive correlation between land surface temperature and earthquakes. Though preliminary, this research could have implications for future hazard mitigation efforts.

Name Drop

"Camp Landsat" spelled out in Landsat imagery

Your Name in Landsat

During this year's virtual Camp Landsat campaign, the Landsat Outreach team unveiled the “Your Name in Landsat” interactive web tool. Within the application, the user writes their name—or any message they want—and the tool displays a Landsat image for each letter. The result is a beautiful, shareable graphic based on Landsat imagery.

+ Your Name Here

Reaching Out

Visitors to the 2024 Ecological Society of America annual meeting.

August 28, 2024

Ecologists Gather in Long Beach

The Landsat Outreach team participated in the 2024 Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Long Beach, California. The NASA exhibit provided a glimpse of how NASA Earth missions support ecological research.

Upcoming Events

The Landsat Communications and Public Engagement Team will be at the following event in Sept. 2024:

Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting

September 22-25, 2024

Anaheim Convention Center

Anaheim, California

NASA Hyperwall Talk, Sunday, Sept. 22 at 5:15p, Booth #303

PUBLICATION SPOTLIGHT

Deforestation amplifies climate change effects on warming and cloud level rise in African montane forests

| Abera et al., 2024

Tropical montane forest ecosystems are important for safekeeping biodiversity and providing ecosystem services like fresh water. In Africa, these critical ecosystems are threatened by deforestation, which amplifies the effects of climate change. In a paper published this month in Nature Communications, researchers found that deforestation caused an increase in air temperature of about 1.37°C and an increase in cloud base height of about 236 meters in less than 20 years in montane forests in Africa. The researchers analyzed Landsat imagery to reveal that approximately 18% of Africa’s montane forests were lost from 2003 to 2022, then used data from both MODIS Terra and Aqua sensors to calculate deforestation-induced temperature change for each pixel. This research emphasizes the cascading effects of deforestation in montane ecosystems.

Figure of tree cover loss between 2003 and 2022 in montane forests in Africa.

Montane forest extent in Africa is shown in green. In three inset boxes, representing regions of high density of montane forests, red represents tree cover loss from 2003-2022. Image credit: Abera et al., 2024

Find more selected Landsat publications on our website.

“The Landsat Next 2030 initiative between USGS and Geoscience Australia is nothing short of transformational…This initiative represents a pivotal step towards a more unified future in Earth observation, enabling us to unlock tremendous potential in landscape analytics for societal benefit.”

—Pete Doucette, Director of the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

USGS and Australia Formally Partner for Upcoming Landsat Next Satellite Mission

NASA Earth Observatory

Selected Landsat Images

August 29, 2024

Aftermath of a Landslide-Triggered Tsunami

The 56-foot wave in Pedersen Lagoon, on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, damaged trees and left a mark on the landscape.

A natural-color Landsat 9 satellite image of southern Alaska near the Pedersen Glacier. White text in this image highlights a landslide, the Pedersen Glacier, Upper lagoon, Lower lagoon, and the Ajalik Bay. This image shows where a landslide slid into the Upper lagoon acquired on August 20, 2024.

August 24, 2024

Constructing Egypt's New Capital

The country’s government is relocating to a brand-new city in the desert outside of Cairo.

A natural-color Landsat 9 satellite image of the development of a city outside of Cairo Egypt. This image was acquired on August 9, 2024.

August 23, 2024

Dry in the River Grande Basin

Amid drought in southern Texas and northern Mexico, Amistad Reservoir has hit record-low levels.

A natural-color Landsat 9 satellite image of the Amistad reservoir in southern Texas and Northern Mexico. This image was acquired on August 19, 2024 after drought had caused the reservoir to hit record-low levels.

August 1, 2024

A Piece of Rhode Island in the Atlantic

Criss-crossing boat wakes left their mark in a phytoplankton bloom drifting near Block Island.

Natural-color Landsat 8 image of Block Island in the Atlantic Ocean, acquired on July 3, 2024. The island itself is pear-shaped. A combination of sunglint and a phytoplankton bloom made the wakes trailing behind the many boats near the island especially visible at the time of this image. White text labels Block Island, New Shoreham, Great Salt Pond, Ship, Ship wakes, Phytoplankton, and the Atlantic Ocean.

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