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Photographs and other images of the Earth taken from the air and from space show a great deal about the planet's landforms, vegetation, and resources. Aerial and satellite images, known as remotely sensed images, permit accurate mapping of land cover and make landscape features understandable on regional, continental, and even...

Landsat 1 began an era of space-based resource data collection that changed the way science, industry, governments, and the general public view the Earth. For the last 25 years, the Landsat program - despite being hampered by institutional problems and budget uncertainties - has successfully provided a continuous supply of...

In the mid-1960's, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) embarked on an initiative to develop and launch the first Earth monitoring satellite to meet the needs of resource managers and earth scientists. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) entered into a partnership with NASA in the early 1970?s to assume...

The Global Land Information System (GLIS) lists Landsat multispectral scanner (MSS) and thematic mapper (TM) data available from the participating international ground stations shown below. These databases of the Landsat Ground Station Operations Working Group (LGSOWG) can be searched, but not ordered, using GLIS. To order Landsat scenes identified on...

This CD-ROM serves as the archive for 73 digital GIS data set for the Great Basin. The data sets cover Nevada, eastern California, southeastern Oregon, southern Idaho, and western Utah. Some of the data sets are incomplete for the total area. On the CD-ROM, the data are provided in three...

Ground-water pumpage for 1990 was estimated for an area of about 5,700 square miles in northwestern Oregon and southwestern Washington as part of the Puget-Willamette Lowland Regional Aquifer System Analysis study. The estimated total ground-water pumpage in 1990 was about 340,000 acre-feet. Ground water in the study area is pumped...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is a party to joint interagency Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) to coordinate resource assessments and evaluations of BLM administered lands. Resource assessments of BLM Resource Areas, that are conducted by the...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in partnership with the University of Maryland Baltimore County, is using historical maps and satellite images to map human-induced land transformations for the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. This work builds on an earlier effort that documented the historical urban development for the San Francisco Bay area....

Many United States federal agencies need accurate, intermediate scaled, land cover information. While many techniques and approaches have been successfully used to classify land cover in relatively small regions, there are substantial problems in applying these techniques to large multi-scene regions. An evaluation was conducted of the multiple layer land...

Burned forested areas have patterns of varying burn severity as a consequence of various topographic, vegetation, and meteorological factors. These patterns are detected and mapped using satellite data. Other ecological information can be abstracted from satellite data regarding rates of recovery of vegetation foliage and variation of burn severity on...

A new automated observatory dedicated to the radiometry of the moon has been constructed to provide new radiance information for calibration of earth-orbiting imaging instruments, particularly Earth Observing System instruments. Instrumentation includes an imaging photometer with 4.5-in. resolution on a fully digital mount and a full-aperture radiance calibration source. Interference...

As part of a joint Russian/American dust-storm experiment, GOES-VISSR (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, Visible-Infrared Spin-Scan Radiometer), data from a visible-band satellite image of a large dust storm emanating from Owens Lake, California were acquired on March 10 and 11, 1993. The satellite...

The Landsat-7 Image Assessment System (IAS), part of the Landsat-7 Ground System, will calibrate and evaluate the radiometric and geometric performance of the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM +) instrument. The IAS incorporates new instrument radiometric artifact correction and absolute radiometric calibration techniques which overcome some limitations to calibration accuracy...

Five overlapping Landsat multispectral scanner satellite images of the interior of the West Antarctic ice sheet were enhanced with principal component analysis, high-pass filtering, and linear contrast stretching and merged into a mosaic by aligning surface features in the overlap areas. The mosaic was registered to geodetic coordinates, to an...

Many regions, cities, and towns in the Western United States need new or expanded water resources because of both population growth and increased development. Any tools or data that can help in the evaluation of an area's potential water resources must be considered for this increasingly critical need. Remotely sensed...

The study investigated the utility of Landsat TM data applied to produce geo-referenced habitat maps for two study areas (Toledo and Stann Creek). Locational and non-site-specific map accuracy was evaluated by stratified random sampling and statistical analysis of satellite classification (SCR) versus air photo interpretation results (PIR) for the overall...

The first European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-1) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images offer opportunities for studying glacier surface properties and near-surface features. Analysis of back-scatter values from digital SAR data from 18 January, 7 June, 1 September and 25 October 1993 of Brúarjökull, an outlet glacier on the northeastern margin...

As part of the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) land use and land cover (LULC) program, the USGS in cooperation with the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) is collecting and integrating LULC data for a standard USGS 1:100,000-scale product. The LULC data collection techniques include interpreting spectrally clustered Landsat Thematic Mapper...

The U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) EROS Data Center (EDC) has managed the Landsat data archive for more than two decades. This archive provides a rich collection of information about the Earth's land surface. Major changes to the surface of the planet can be detected, measured, and analyzed using Landsat data....

A methodology has been developed to document the tremendous growth large metropolitan regions have experienced over time. A GIS was used to compile a database of urbanization for the San Francisco/ Sacramento urban region spanning 140 years. Historical records, USGS topographic maps, aerial photographs, and Landsat imagery were used to...

Landsat imagery, combined with aerial photography, sketch maps, and diagrams, is used as the basis for a description of the geography, climatology, and glaciology, including mass balance, variation, and hazards, of the Greenland ice sheet and local ice caps and glaciers. The Greenland ice sheet, with an estimated area of...

Geologic mapping of Port Moller, Stevopak Bay, and Simeonof Island 1° by 2° quadrangles on the Alaska Peninsula was conducted as part of the Alaska Mineral Resource Assessment Program (AMRAP). Geologic observations was obtained by using helicopter overflights, vertical aerial photography, and enhanced and extensively processed Landsat imagery (York and...

Pine Island Glacier is one of the major ice streams draining West Antarctica. We calculated average velocities for both its grounded and floating parts by tracking crevasses and other patterns moving with the ice on two sequential images acquired in February and December 1992 by ERS-1 SAR (European Remote-Sensing Satellite,...

New surficial data (field, Landsat TM and topography) define morpho-tectonic domains and rift flank segmentation in the Ol'khon region of the Central Baikal rift. Deformation, drainage and depositional patterns indicate a change in the locus of active extension that may relate to a recent (<l Ma) change in the kinematics...

Spatial patterns and rates of forest fragmentation were assessed using digital remote sensing data for a region in southern New England that included 157 townships in southern New Hampshire and northeastern Massachusetts. The study area has undergone marked population increases over the last several decades. Following classification of 1973 and...