Images

Clearcutting in a forest in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma.  Heavy machinery is being used to cut trees and haul lumber away to another location. 

Rangeland managers need information on the current vegetation condition and how the landscape has changed through time. To address this need, scientsist from the USGS and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) developed the Rangeland Condition Monitoring Assessment and Projection (RCMAP) project. These data classify U.S.

To assess the accuracy of Annual NLCD, Collection 1.0, a team of image interpreters review Landsat imagery, high resolution aerial photography, and other supporting data to make annual land cover classifications for thousands of 30-meter by 30-meter plot locations for the full 1985-2023 time series. This process is broken down into two phases.

A map generated by 2023 Annual National Land Cover Database (Annual NLCD) depicting the different land cover classes.

The Park Fire north of Sacramento in California forced thousands of residents to evacuate in late July as it spread to over 370,000 acres. The fire started on July 24th. Landsat 8 captured an image of the fire two days later.

The USGS Landsat archive holds over fifty years of Earth-Observing satellite data. This animation displays the cumulative number of Landsat scenes since 1972. The colors on the maps show the density of the number of Landsat Level-1 products. 

JACIE 2025 will be held April 7 - 11, 2025 at USGS Headquarters in Reston, Virginia. 

Annual JACIE Workshops are sponsored by government agencies and allow remote sensing experts to discuss system capabilities, calibration, and the impacts of data quality on various applications. 

Highlights of JACIE Workshops include:

The Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area, also known as the Valley of the Sun, is comprised of more than 14,600 square miles and is considered the largest metropolitan area in the southwestern United States. The desert climate and abundant sunshine of the area are main factors in population growth and urban sprawl. 

The Railroad Valley Playa, located in east central Nevada, measures about 80 miles long and nearly 20 miles wide, and is a vast and wide-open landscape. 

Each year, June is National Ocean Month! 

Landsat 8 image acquired on June 24, 2024, showing the floods that affected Union County, South Dakota, and Plymouth County, Iowa. A multi-day heavy rainfall event in South Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota led to widespread flooding across the region.

Landsat 8 image acquired on June 24, 2024, showing the floods that affected South Dakota and Iowa. A multi-day heavy rainfall event in South Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota led to widespread flooding across the region.

Landsat 8's Operational Land Imager (OLI) captured this icy view of Ayon Island on June 17, 2024. The island's low-lying tundra and the shorelines create a picturesque view from its high latitude location in the East Siberian Sea. This unique polar landmass is separated from the mainland by the Malyy Chaunskiy Strait.

For 25 years, the Landsat 7 satellite acquired millions of images of Earth that supported studies of how land is used and how it has changed across urban, agriculture, forest, snow and ice-covered areas around the globe, as well as natural and manmade disasters.

Group photo during the Norwegian Ambassador's visit to EROS. 

Norwegian Ambassador, Anniken Krutnes, learns about the Landsat Satellite Program history on a tour of USGS EROS.

Norwegian Ambassador, Anniken Krutnes, overlooks the radome that houses the Landsat receiving antenna during her visit to EROS.

The U.S. Geological Survey and German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt  or DLR sign statement for plans to continue partnership with the upcoming Landsat Next satellite mission.

USGS and German Aerospace Center sign statement of intent for upcoming Landsat Next mission.

(Left to Right): Head of the DLR Space Division Dr. Anke Pagels-Kerp and USGS Deputy Director-Operations Cindy Lodge.

Image from the inaugural U.S.-Germany Space Dialogue Space Dialogue in Berlin on June 4, 2024.

USGS Deputy Director-Operations Cindy Lodge shown here with DLR’s German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) Director professor Stefan Dech at DLR’s Earth Observation Center in Oberpfaffenhofen finalizing the signatures on the statement of intent for the upcoming Landsat Next mission.