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Core Science Systems Mission Area

USGS CSS serves as the primary national civilian mapping agency, including topographic and geologic mapping for Federal and State requirements, national geospatial coordination, satellite operations and remote sensing. Our products and data are necessary to understand, monitor, and detect changes that affect the Nation’s natural and agricultural resources, the economy, public safety, and security.

News

Celebrating 50 years of groundbreaking science from below the Earth’s surface

Celebrating 50 years of groundbreaking science from below the Earth’s surface

Latest in Landsat November 2024 - Vol. 3 | Issue 11

Best Student Geologic Map Competition

Best Student Geologic Map Competition

Publications

Segment anything model can not segment anything: Assessing AI foundation model's generalizability in permafrost mapping

This paper assesses trending AI foundation models, especially emerging computer vision foundation models and their performance in natural landscape feature segmentation. While the term foundation model has quickly garnered interest from the geospatial domain, its definition remains vague. Hence, this paper will first introduce AI foundation models and their defining characteristics. Built upon the
Authors
Wenwen Li, Chia-Yu Hsu, Sizhe Wang, Yezhou Yang, Hyunho Lee, Anna Liljedahl, Chandi Witharana, Yili Yang, Brendan M. Rogers, Samantha Arundel, Matthew B. Jones, Kenton McHenry, Patricia Solis

Earth observation remote sensing tools—Assessing systems, trends, and characteristics

With the ever-increasing number of civil and commercial remote-sensing satellite launches in recent years, the Earth Observation community needs to better understand the quality of new data products as they become available for scientific research purposes.
Authors
Simon J. Cantrell, Jeff Clauson, Cody Anderson

Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation (JACIE)

The Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation (JACIE) was formed to leverage resources from several Federal agencies for the characterization of remote sensing data and to share those results across the remote sensing community (U.S. Geological Survey, 2024).Remote sensing data and the quality of that data are vital to (1) understanding the physical world and (2) supporting the science and engine
Authors
Jeff Clauson, Cody Anderson, Jim Vrabel

Science

Eyes on Earth Episode 127 – The Historic Landsat 7 Mission

Taking care of a satellite that’s 438 miles in space requires creative problem solving—we talk about those moments and memories of the nearly 25 years of land imaging from Landsat 7.
link

Eyes on Earth Episode 127 – The Historic Landsat 7 Mission

Taking care of a satellite that’s 438 miles in space requires creative problem solving—we talk about those moments and memories of the nearly 25 years of land imaging from Landsat 7.
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link

Eyes on Earth Episode 126 – Annual NLCD

The next generation of USGS land cover mapping is here. Annual NLCD provides land cover data of the U.S. every year back to 1985.
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Eyes on Earth Episode 125 – The LANDFIRE Program at 20

LANDFIRE is a diverse product suite with countless uses that go beyond fire management. The program has now been providing this satellite data for 20 years.
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Eyes on Earth Episode 125 – The LANDFIRE Program at 20

LANDFIRE is a diverse product suite with countless uses that go beyond fire management. The program has now been providing this satellite data for 20 years.
Learn More
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