Multispectral (approx. 4-12 bands)

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center and the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center have led the development, validation, and production of the Landsat Burned Area products. The algorithm that generates the products identifies burned areas in Landsat images, which have a spatial resolution of 30 meters and a temporal resolution of 16 days or more, depending on cloud cover.

The Landsat Collection 2 Provisional Aquatic Reflectance (AR) science product is now available through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Science Processing Architecture (ESPA) on-demand interface.

LANDFIRE’s latest directive is to provide agency leaders and managers with common “all-lands” datasets for strategic fire and resource management planning and analysis covering the 50 States, Puerto Rico, and insular territories on an annual basis. This mandate requires near-continuous mapping of landscape-level change (disturbance) and updating more than 20 geospatial products at 30-meter resolution.

LANDFIRE products are integral to fire management and research within the United States. An essential component of LANDFIRE is the development of detailed vegetation maps, which use 30-meter Landsat imagery as the principal source of remotely sensed data.

Barrier islands, headlands, and coastal shorelines provide numerous ecosystem goods and services, including storm protection and erosion control for the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, salinity regulation in estuaries, carbon sequestration in marshes, and areas for recreation and tourism. These coastal features are dynamic environments; storms, wave energy, tides, currents, and relative sea-level rise are powerful forces that shape local geomorphology and habitat distribution.

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are diverse communities of organisms including lichen, moss, and cyanobacteria that live on soil surfaces in dryland environments around the world. Although biocrusts are estimated to make up 12% of the planet’s terrestrial surface and play critical roles in water and carbon cycling, there is great uncertainty related to their distribution, function, and response to change.

The riparian corridors of the Lower Colorado River mainstem, the San Pedro and Virgin rivers were selected to measure riparian plant greenness and water use for the past 22 years (2000–2021). A revised ETa algorithm, Nagler ET(EVI2), was used following changes that incorporate gridded weather data (Daymet) and Landsat-derived 2-band Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI2).

The USGS Land Change, Monitoring, Assessments, and Projections (LCMAP) project was instituted to monitor and assess land use and land cover change through time, promote understanding of the causes and consequences of land change, and offer insight into the interactions between land change and climate change. LCMAP utilizes all available observations produced by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat Program to monitor change and to produce annual land change products.

Recent catastrophic wildfires in the western United States have led to loss of life and property and burned through some of the most iconic landscapes in the National Park Service (NPS).

Developing maps of exotic annual grass (EAG) phenology allows researchers and land managers to track the timing and progression of EAG growing-season dynamics year to year. Alterations in phenology patterns can indicate changing environmental conditions such as progressively warming temperatures, which can cause the growing season to start earlier. In the western United States, EAGs have invaded shrub ecosystems for more than a century, and in that time a positive feedback cycle between fire and EAGs has developed.