Summary

Description

Landsat satellite data have been produced, archived, and distributed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) since 1972. Users rely on these data for historical study of land surface change, but shoulder the burden of post-production processing to create applications-ready data sets. In compliance with guidelines established through the Global Climate Observing System, USGS has embarked on production of higher-level Landsat data products to support land surface change studies. Terrestrial variables such as surface reflectance are being prototyped as fundamental input to higher level products such as Burned Area, Fractional Snow Covered Area, and Dynamic Surface Water Extent. These products are intended to provide a framework for producing long-term Landsat science data collections suited for monitoring, assessing, and predicting land surface change over time.