October 15, 2019 - Landsat Burned Area and Fractional Snow Covered Area Science Products are now available from 1984-present

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Earlier this year, the USGS released research-quality, applications-ready, Landsat Level-3 Science Products that are freely available for download from EarthExplorer. These products can reduce the amount of time users spend on data processing to help monitor, assess and project how changes in land use, land cover, and climate may affect fire occurrence, snow extent, and water quality and quantity.

The Landsat Burned Area product identifies burned areas in all ecosystems (e.g. forest, shrubland, and grassland). It may be used to quantify trends and patterns, characterize drivers of fire occurrence, and inform projections of future fire pattern behavior. The Dynamic Surface Water Extent product provides pixel-level existence and condition of surface water. This information is useful in determining impacts by large-scale land cover and land use changes and increasing water demands. The Landsat Fractional Snow Covered Area product provides per-pixel fractional snow cover that can support the measurement and monitoring of snow cover patterns across topographically complex mountainous regions.

All three products are generated from U.S. Landsat Analysis Ready Data inputs collected from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), and Operational Land Imager (OLI)/Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) instruments. Burned Area and Fractional Snow Covered Area are available from 1984 to present, whereas the Dynamic Surface Water Extent product is available from 1982 to present. This 36+ year record at 30-meter spatial resolution allows for the discrimination and study of natural and human-induced changes to the Earth’s land surface.

Download these science products from EarthExplorer or visit the Landsat Science Products webpage for documentation and additional information.