Tuesday, September 17, 2013

WyomingView workshop highlights the value of no-cost Landsat data for natural resources monitoring

WyomingView coordinator Ramesh Sivanpillai described how no-cost Landsat data can be used for monitoring and mapping natural resources in one of the several pre-conference workshops of the 2013 Geospatial Conference of the West held in Laramie, WY. Participants were introduced to remote sensing basics and data characteristics in order to provide an overview of various data sources along with various advantages of Landsat data.

Landsat data constitute the longest collection of remotely sensed earth observations. Starting 2008, the US Geological Survey (USGS) has made the entire Landsat data archive available to users at no-cost which has created an unprecedented opportunity for monitoring and mapping changes to the earth’s surface features.


Participants were introduced to similarities and differences among data collected by various Landsat satellites and how to search and download them for their area of interest from USGS’ web portal - Earth Explorer (earthexplorer.usgs.gov). More information about Landsat data can be found at: landsat.usgs.gov.

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