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The Rangeland Condition Monitoring Assessment and Projection (RCMAP) project quantifies the percentage cover of rangeland components across the western United States using Landsat imagery from 1985 to 2021. The RCMAP product suite consists of nine fractional components: annual herbaceous, bare ground, herbaceous, litter, nonsagebrush shrub, perennial herbaceous, sagebrush, shrub, and...

The primary purpose of this document is to convey product specifications of the OPERA (Observational Products for End-users from Remote-sensing Analysis) Level-3 Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWx) product that uses Harmonized Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2A/B (HLS) as the primary image-based inputs. This product, referred to by the short name DSWx-HLS, will...

This report documents morphological changes between 1953 and 2021 at East Timbalier Island, Louisiana, a Gulf of Mexico barrier island. East Timbalier Island, which was located west of the Mississippi River Delta at the front of Timbalier Bay, was one of the most rapidly changing barrier islands on Earth. Since...

In arid and Mediterranean regions, landscape-scale wetland conservation requires understanding how wildlife responds to dynamic freshwater availability and conservation actions to enhance wetland habitat. Taking advantage of Landsat satellite data and structured and community science bird survey data, we built species distribution models to describe how three duck species, the...

National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2019 is a new epoch of national land cover products for the conterminous United States. Image quality is fundamental to the quality of any land cover product. Image preprocessing has often taken a considerable proportion of overall time and effort for this...

Cover crops are planted to reduce soil erosion, increase soil fertility, and improve watershed management. In the Delmarva Peninsula of the eastern United States, winter cover crops are essential for reducing nutrient and sediment losses from farmland. Cost-share programs have been created to incentivize cover crops to achieve conservation objectives....

Actual evapotranspiration modeling is providing useful information for researchers and resource managers in agriculture and water resources around the world. The performance of models depends on the accuracy of forcing inputs and model parameters. We developed an improved approach to the parameterization of the Operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance...

Running Reelfoot Bayou (RRB) is the outlet canal of Reelfoot Lake, the largest natural lake in Tennessee. RRB is not able to contain discharge from Reelfoot Lake greater than the bankfull discharge of 28 m3/s (1000 ft3/s), which typically occurs at the beginning of the growing season...

Estimates of riparian vegetation water use are important for hydromorphological assessment, partitioning within human and natural environments, and informing environmental policy decisions. The objectives of this study were to calculate the actual evapotranspiration (ETa) (mm/day and mm/year) and derive riparian vegetation annual consumptive use (CU) in acre-feet (AF) for select...

The Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Fractional Snow Covered Area science product indicates the percentage of pixels covered by snow for Landsat 4–9 imagery. Landsat’s spatial resolution offers the capability to map snow cover patterns across topographically complex mountainous regions. Snow cover is spatially and temporally variable and is often concentrated...

A new set of resources is now available that describe global shoreline characteristics. High resolution (30 m), globally comprehensive Coastal Segment Units (CSUs) and Ecological Coastal Units (ECUs) were developed in a collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Esri, and the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON). The data were...

Accurate and complete data on fire locations and burned areas are needed to quantify trends and patterns of fire occurrence, characterize drivers of fire, project future fire pattern behavior, and help with assessments of fire effects on natural and social systems. The Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Burned Area science product...

The Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Dynamic Surface Water Extent science product provides raster data that represent surface water inundation per pixel in Landsat 4–9 imagery. The Collection 2 Dynamic Surface Water Extent science product contains six acquisition-based raster products relating to surface water. Surface water extent is modulated by weather...

This study focused on optimizing the placement of shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands for pixel-level estimation of fractional crop residue cover (fR) for the upcoming Landsat Next mission. We applied an iterative wavelength shift approach to a database of crop residue field spectra collected in Beltsville, Maryland, USA (n =...

Background: Remotely sensed burned area products are critical to support fire modelling, policy, and management but often require further processing before use.Aim: We calculated fire history metrics from the Landsat Burned Area Product (1984–2020) across the conterminous U.S. (CONUS) including (1) fire frequency, (2) time since last burn (TSLB), (3) year of...

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During the early post-launch phase of the Landsat 9 mission, the Landsat 8 and 9 mission teams conducted a successful under-fly of Landsat 8 by Landsat 9, allowing for the near-simultaneous data collection of common Earth targets by the on-board sensors for cross-calibration. This effort, coordinated by...

Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) Center of Excellence (ECCOE) focuses on improving the accuracy, precision, calibration, and product quality of remote-sensing data, leveraging years of multiscale optical system geometric and radiometric calibration and characterization experience. The ECCOE Landsat Cal/Val Team continually...

This study investigates the applicability of the Landsat Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE) science product for waterbird habitat modeling in multiple non-canopied habitat types. We compare surface water distribution estimates derived from DSWE to two site-specific survey methods: visual surveys and digitized aerial imagery. These site-specific surveys were conducted on...

The state of California, United States of America produces many crop products that are both utilized domestically and exported throughout the world. With nearly 39,000 km2 of croplands, monitoring unintentional and intentional surface water inundation is important for <a class="topic-link" title="Learn more about water...

Eelgrass (<em>Zostera marina</em>) is a highly productive seagrass that plays an essential role in the health of the estuarine and coastal ecosystems; however, information about its abundance and distribution is insufficient in the Bering Sea along the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. We inventoried the spatial extent and abundance of...

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) meadows are expansive along the lower Alaska Peninsula, supporting a rich diversity of marine life, yet little is known about their status and trends in the region. We tested techniques to inventory and monitor trends in the spatial extent and abundance of eelgrass in lagoons of...

Following the completion of land cover and change (LCC) products for the conterminous United States (CONUS), the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS’s) Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection initiative has broadened the capability of characterizing continuous historical land change across the full Landsat records for Hawaiʻi at 30-meter resolution. One of the challenges of implementing...

Segmentation of Earth science imagery is an increasingly common task. Among modern techniques that use Deep Learning, the UNet architecture has been shown to be a reliable for segmenting a range of imagery. We developed software–Segmentation Gym–to implement a data-model pipeline for segmentation of scientific imagery using a family of...

Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val) Center of Excellence (ECCOE) focuses on improving the accuracy, precision, calibration, and product quality of remote-sensing data, leveraging years of multiscale optical system geometric and radiometric calibration and characterization experience. The ECCOE Landsat Cal/Val...