| | Dr. Francois Smith, an avid Landsat user and an expert in commercial satellite data, spoke to the Landsat team about the symbiosis between private and public remote sensing sectors. | | |
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July 25, 2025
Deforestation in Paraguay’s Gran Chaco
The Gran Chaco—South America’s second largest forest—is disappearing. The immense forest spans multiple countries in central South America, forming a biodiversity hub in the semiarid lowland region. Watch decades of forest change captured by Landsat satellites.
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July 23, 2025
Celebrating 53 Years Since Landsat 1’s Launch
When the first Landsat satellite launched in 1972, it posed the following question: could we manage our natural resources using remotely–sensed data? The answer, 53 years on, is a resounding “yes.”
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PUBLICATION SPOTLIGHT
Mapping Reservoir Water Surface Area in the Contiguous United States Using the High-Temporal Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel (HLS) Data at a Sub-Weekly Time Scale
| Yadav et al., 2025
Monitoring reservoir water storage is fundamental for water resource management, flood control, and hydropower generation. Using data from Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS), research led by scientists at Texas A&M University developed a new algorithm to monitor reservoir water levels in the contiguous U.S. every few days instead of every month. The paper was co-authored by Justin Huntington, former Landsat Science Team Member. The method, called Sub-weekly Area of Reservoirs from Analysis of Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 data for Continental U.S. (SARAH-CONUS), uses a random forest classification model to classify pixels as water, non-water, cloud, and ice. Because it accurately estimates reservoir extent, SARAH-CONUS can captures changes in reservoir surface every few days in greater detail than existing systems. SARAH-CONUS will allow resource managers to make more informed decisions about water allocation and infrastructure by providing early warning capabilities for drought conditions and helping farmers and agricultural sectors to better plan their irrigation schedules.
| Reservoir distribution and observation frequency in the Continental U.S. The map on the left categorizes reservoirs by data availability, with blue representing reservoirs with in-situ surface area, yellow as those with in-situ elevation data, and red as those with limited data. The map on the right shows HLS raster coverage, with darker shades indicating more observations available. Image credit: Yadav et al., 2025 | | |
July 28, 2025
How to Rotate Crops
New research supported by NASA’s Harvest program has answers that could help farmers increase their yields.
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July 23, 2025
Brilliant Bloom in the Baltic Sea
An explosion in the numbers of cyanobacteria transformed the Baltic Sea into a swirling canvas of green in summer 2025.
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July 12, 2025
Greenland’s Bejeweled Ice Sheet
In early July 2025, around halfway through the island’s annual melting season, blue meltwater ponds dotted the western side of the massive ice sheet.
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July 10, 2025
Santorini’s Hidden Worlds
An explosive eruption thousands of years ago transformed the volcanic island but preserved a Bronze Age town under a layer of ash.
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“The Landsat program has delivered extraordinary returns on investment for over 50 years. It remains vital not only as a public asset, but as an engine for innovation and a touchstone for data quality in the EO sector.”
— Eric von Eckartsberg, Chief Revenue Officer at EarthDaily Analytics USA
EarthDaily Landsat Letter of Support
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NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) was developed in 2007 to provide near real-time active fire data to natural resource managers generally within three hours of satellite observation.
Within FIRMS, users can access the near real-time Landsat Fire and Thermal Anomalies (LFTA) product for the continental U.S., the southern half of Canada, and the northern half of Mexico that offers high-resolution, 30-meter active fire detection data within 30 to 60 minutes of observation.
+ Explore the data
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