Remote Sensing Research and Development

Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Burned Area (BA) contains two acquisition-based raster data products that represent burn classification and burn probability.

Eyes on Earth is a podcast on remote sensing, Earth observation, land change and science, brought to you by the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. In this episode, we learn how Landsat helps to track bark beetle outbreaks.

Eyes on Earth is a podcast on remote sensing, Earth observation, land change and science, brought to you by the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. In this episode, we hear interviews with international partners on the day of the Landsat 9 launch.

The Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) project has generated an integrated suite of annual land cover and land surface change products for the United States based on time series data from the Landsat record from 1985–2020. LCMAP Collection 1.2 Science Products are based on the USGS implementation of the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) algorithm.

Landsat 4-9 Collection 2 Level-2 Albers Scenes are no longer available to download from the USGS as of January 31, 2024. Please access the Landsat Collection 2 U.S. Analysis Ready Data webpage for more information on a similar product.

The Landsat Collection 2 U.S. Analysis Ready Data (ARD) product contains Top of Atmosphere (TOA) reflectance, TOA Brightness Temperature (BT), Surface Reflectance (SR), Surface Temperature (ST), and Quality Assessment (QA) data.

Landsat Collection 2 Level-2 surface reflectance and surface temperature data processing requires atmospheric auxiliary data from multiple external sources. The required data is extracted from the source and the components specific to generating a Collection 2 Level-2 product are repackaged and are available to download.

Ozone data products are available for the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instruments and for the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), and are used in the surface reflectance algorithm for Landsat 4-7 data. Different sources are used for different date range.

The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Reanalysis 1 products are annual Network Common Data Form (netCDF) files, which contain the daily values for each surface pressure, precipitable water, and air temperature. NCEP data are used in the surface reflectance algorithm for Landsat 4-7 data.

MODIS Fused C2 is a fused product of water vapor and ozone data used to process Landsat Collection 2 Level-2 products. This product contains four MODIS data sets: MODIS Aerosol Optical Thickness Daily Climate Modeling Grid (MOD09CMA and MYD09CMA) and MODIS SR Daily Climate Modeling Grid (MOD09CMG and MYD09CMG).

Modern Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications Version 2 (MERRA-2) is a NASA atmospheric reanalysis that provides data beginning in 1980. MERRA-2 provides atmospheric data that are used as input to the radiative transfer model used to determine surface temperature.

Data from Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5, Forward Processing (GEOS-5 FP-IT) are used in the surface temperature algorithm for Landsat 7 data starting in 2000 as well as Landsat 8-9 data for Global products. The files are one file per 3-hour period containing one-time observation (8 files per day).