Mapping Fire History Across the State

Land managers in Florida use prescribed burns to help prevent fire fuel buildup and maintain the State’s native vegetation for species dependent on it; the Florida Forest Service issues permits to burn more than two million acres annually. Land managers—public and private—can benefit from knowing the extent and timing of past fires to make decisions about future fuel treatment and prescribed burns. Recent research addresses that need Florida-wide. Scientists from the USGS and Florida’s Tall Timbers research station used the Landsat Burned Area product from 2006 to 2018, along with other information, to map the history and perimeter of fires of various sizes and ownerships across the State (Teske and others, 2021).

Keeping an Eye on the Everglades

University and Federal researchers have used Landsat’s archive to study hurricane damage to mangroves in Everglades National Park. Imagery can reveal the extent of the damage and the length of time it takes for an area to either recover to its prior state or be replaced by open water. One study using Landsat found that a trend of decreasing outer coastline mangroves from 1985 to 2017 was more than offset by increases in inner coastline mangroves. Each hurricane during that timeframe caused damage, but the amount of damage varied by wind factors. Such studies can support effective decisions about ecosystem management and restoration (Han and others, 2018).

Addressing a Changing Climate in Miami Beach

NASA DEVELOP Program researchers used data from several Landsat satellites to provide information to the Miami Beach Public Works Department to mitigate climate change effects in Biscayne Bay, including reducing storm damage and monitoring water quality. The group assessed tree loss and recovery and coastal damage after Hurricane Irma, historical trends in urban vegetation density, and the condition of mangroves in protected areas (NASA, 2017b, 2018). They also developed a tool to view the bay’s water-quality parameters over time (NASA, 2017a).

Landsat—Critical Information Infrastructure for the Nation

Landsat is the most widely used land remote sensing data source within Federal civilian agencies. Local, State, Tribal, and Federal agencies use Landsat to monitor and forecast a wide range of land surface phenomena. Information from Landsat contributes to day-to-day decisions on land, water, and resource use that protect life and property; safeguard the environment; advance science, technology, and education; support climate change resiliency; and grow the U.S. economy. Landsat’s imagery provides a landscape-level view of land surface, inland lake, and coastal processes, both natural and human-induced. Landsat enables us to better understand the scope, nature, and speed of change to the natural and built environment.

Businesses draw upon Landsat data to provide customer-specific applications to improve logistics, resource allocation, and investment decisions. Commercial space imaging firms leverage Landsat data to refine product offerings and support new information services. A 2017 USGS study determined the total annual economic benefit of Landsat data in the United States to be $2.06 billion, far surpassing its development and operating costs (Straub and others, 2019).

Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 provide 8-day repeat coverage of the Earth’s land surfaces. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the USGS are currently reviewing the findings from a joint Architecture Study Team, which will inform the design and implementation approach for Landsat Next, the follow-on mission to Landsat 9. Landsat 9 and its successors are planned to provide a sustainable, space-based system to extend the 50-year Landsat series of high-quality global land imaging measurements—the world’s longest time series of the Earth’s land surface.

The long-term availability of consistent and accurate Landsat data, combined with a no-cost data policy, allows users to analyze extensive geographic areas and to better understand and manage long-term trends in land surface change. New cloud computing and data analytics technologies use Landsat data in a wide range of decision-support tools for Government and industry. Much like global positioning system and weather data, Landsat data are used every day to help us better understand our dynamic planet.