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Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

At the USGS EROS Center, we study land change and produce land change data products used by researchers, resource managers, and policy makers across the nation and around the world. We also operate the Landsat satellite program with NASA, and maintain the largest civilian collection of images of the Earth’s land surface in existence, including tens of millions of satellite images.

News

Landsat Is Vital to American Agriculture, Forests

Landsat Is Vital to American Agriculture, Forests

New report ranks USGS assets high among Earth observations systems surveyed

New report ranks USGS assets high among Earth observations systems surveyed

Landsat Informing Better Wetland Management in Australia and Africa

Landsat Informing Better Wetland Management in Australia and Africa

Publications

Projected sea-level rise and high tide flooding at Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida

IntroductionNational parks and preserves in the South Atlantic-Gulf Region contain valuable coastal habitats such as tidal wetlands and mangrove forests, as well as irreplaceable historic buildings and archeological sites located in low-lying areas. These natural and cultural resources are vulnerable to accelerated sea-level rise and escalating high tide flooding events. Through a Natural Resource
Authors
Hana R. Thurman, Nicholas M. Enwright, Michael J. Osland, Davina L. Passeri, Richard H. Day, Bethanie M. Simons, Jeffrey J. Danielson, W. Matthew Cushing

NASA Champions 2024: Data strategies for when to use cloud, coding strategies for parallelization, & first examples of big science in the Cloud

From April-May 2024, the NASA Mentors who span eleven Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) co-led the third Champions Cohort with the NASA Openscapes project team, this year focusing on, teaching lessons they adapted for geospatial and cloud analysis. The Cohort included nine international research teams from academia and government that were curious about working with NASA Earthdata in the
Authors
Michele Thornton, Catalina Taglialatela, Luis Lopez, Matt Fisher, Alexis Hunzinger, Mahsa Jami, Brianna M. Lind, Cassie Nickles, Andy Teucher, Aronne Merrelli, Erin Robinson, Julie Lowndes

Application of normalized radar backscatter and hyperspectral data to augment rangeland vegetation fractional classification

Rangeland ecosystems in the western United States are vulnerable to climate change, fire, and anthropogenic disturbances, yet classification of rangeland areas remains difficult due to frequently sparse vegetation canopies that increase the influence of soils and senesced vegetation, the overall abundance of senesced vegetation, heterogeneity of life forms, and limited ground-based data. The Range
Authors
Matthew B. Rigge, Brett Bunde, Kory Postma, Simon Oliver, Norman Mueller

Science

Eyes on Earth Episode 121 – Mapping the Australia Coastline

Landsat’s deep archive can reveal where coastlines are changing, even for an entire continent, especially with some clever coding to make it useful to researchers.
link

Eyes on Earth Episode 121 – Mapping the Australia Coastline

Landsat’s deep archive can reveal where coastlines are changing, even for an entire continent, especially with some clever coding to make it useful to researchers.
Learn More

Eyes on Earth Episode 120 – Mapping the California Coastline

Coastline erosion can change your favorite beach. But it can also affect highways and buildings. Landsat, along with high-resolution data, can be used to model the past and predict the future of changes caused by sea level rise and coastal erosion.
link

Eyes on Earth Episode 120 – Mapping the California Coastline

Coastline erosion can change your favorite beach. But it can also affect highways and buildings. Landsat, along with high-resolution data, can be used to model the past and predict the future of changes caused by sea level rise and coastal erosion.
Learn More

Post-Fire Hazards Impacts to Resources and Ecosystems (PHIRE): Support for Response, Recovery, and Mitigation

The Post-Fire Hazards Impacts to Resources and Ecosystems (PHIRE) project provides science to characterize climate-amplified, uncharacteristic patterns of wildfire disturbance and post-fire ecosystem recovery and enhance prediction of environmental impacts and post-fire hazards.
link

Post-Fire Hazards Impacts to Resources and Ecosystems (PHIRE): Support for Response, Recovery, and Mitigation

The Post-Fire Hazards Impacts to Resources and Ecosystems (PHIRE) project provides science to characterize climate-amplified, uncharacteristic patterns of wildfire disturbance and post-fire ecosystem recovery and enhance prediction of environmental impacts and post-fire hazards.
Learn More