Eyes on Earth

Exotic annual grasses, or EAGs, are invasive species. They outcompete native grasses. They are extremely flammable. And they are expanding into higher elevations. Targeted sheep grazing is one way to combat these invasive grasses, manage fire risk, and help restore native sagebrush in western states.The EROS team releases weekly EAG maps during the peak green-up in late April to early June, along with annual phenology maps to show the seasonal timing of the green-up. Dr. Kelly Hopping at Boise State University is using these maps to see whether targeted sheep grazing can help manage EAGs. The maps help researchers work with sheep producers to know when is the best time to move the sheep into those areas so their grazing can do the most good. The sheep then, as a part of the team solving the problem of invasive grasses, get to eat in the field when they might not otherwise have grazing available. Learn more in this episode of Eyes on Earth.

Landsat has been accurate and reliable for over 50 years because of the diligent calibration and validation work done by the team at EROS. One of the ways the team validates what they have so carefully calibrated is to take measurements on the ground while Landsat passes by overhead. For this Eyes on Earth podcast episode, we go out to the EROS test site during a Landsat pass to get a sense of what that work is like. Learn about the instruments used for this work and why it's important to keeping Landsat as the gold standard for Earth observations.

Landsat is the longest-running, continuously operating record of Earth observations, and it's the gold standard reference point that other civil and commercial satellite programs trust. If a researcher is studying multiple Landsat images of the same spot on Earth, and there is something in those images that suggests a change, that researcher needs to have the confidence that that change is a real change on the landscape and not because of something that changed or degraded in the sensor. Think of it this way. We are using a system to quantify changes on the Earth—we need to make sure the system itself is not changing.

Declassified spy satellite imagery, distributed by the USGS EROS Center, is finding fascinating uses since being made available to the public starting in the 1990s. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with Philipp Barthelme from the University of Edinburgh, who used imagery from the declassified HEXAGON and CORONA satellites to map bomb craters and herbicide spray lines from the Vietnam War. These features appear in the black and white photos quite clearly, so Barthelme worked out machine learning methods to automatically detect them. This method can help narrow down where to search for unexploded weapons and focus on the areas that are most contaminated.

Eyes on Earth tackles artificial intelligence (AI) in a 2-part episode. AI is quickly becoming a necessary part of geospatial work at EROS, helping us efficiently do science to better manage our world. In Part 1, EROS Director Pete Doucette discusses AI and its current and upcoming impact on our work at EROS. To help clarify AI terminology such as machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, transformers, and foundation models, we also talk to scientists who are using AI. And we learn about how AI enabled the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) to become an annual product.Part 2 will discuss one more potential application of AI—keeping Landsat satellites safe and healthy in orbit. We also have all of our guests comment on AI's challenges and benefits.

Eyes on Earth tackles artificial intelligence (AI) in a 2-part episode. AI is quickly becoming a necessary part of geospatial work at EROS, helping us efficiently do science to better manage our world. In Part 1, we talked about AI's current and upcoming impact on our work at EROS and clarified some of the AI jargon. The successful use of AI to make NLCD an annual product was a key example.In Part 2, we discuss another potential application of AI—keeping Landsat satellites safe and healthy in orbit. Additionally, guests comment on how readily staff are adapting to using this rapidly evolving technology. They discuss the biggest benefits and challenges we face in using AI. Among the benefits are making EROS data products more accurate and reliable and getting them to the public in a more timely fashion.

Every pixel has a story. At least that's how land remote sensing scientist Jo Horton sees it. The new Annual National Land Cover Database (NLCD) was just released in October 2024. NLCD is widely used for land cover and change research in the U.S. That's why the Reference and Validation team provides accuracy metrics to users, and this work allows EROS to move land cover mapping science forward. Learn about what the Reference and Validation team does and what they are looking for when they closely examine thousands of Landsat sample pixels across the conterminous U.S. It sometimes involves some detective work as they figure out the stories of each pixel across time.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk to ground station technicians to find out how Landsat satellite data gets from the spacecraft to EROS and then to the archive. We see what it's like in EROS's Landsat operations room and what the technicians do before, during, and after a Landsat pass. The task of making sure those bits of data make their way to the archive so it can be used for land change science occurs for them several times a day. As routine as it might be sometimes, they are a small but important part of a large mission that is documenting global land change.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we mingle at the 2024 EROS Fall Poster Session. A poster session is essentially a way for scientists to share their work with their colleagues in a public forum. About 30 posters were on display in the EROS atrium from EROS staff and several students from South Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota. We talked to a few of them to get quick summaries of their research.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the incredible career of Landsat 7, which collected science imagery of the Earth for nearly 25 years. The Flight Operations Team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and engineers at EROS work together to collect imagery, send commands to the satellite, and keep it healthy. After over 133,000 orbits and 3.3 million images collected, Landsat 7 stopped acquiring imagery in 2024. We talked with some of the people who helped keep Landsat 7 flying to make sure it could keep doing its job during its long life. They talk about the close calls, different types of maneuvers, working on holidays, and creatively solving problems to keep it flying and operating. And as always, we discuss the importance of the Landsat mission, its global legacy, and the continuity of the long record that goes back to 1972.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the latest release of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). More than just a map, NLCD is a stack of maps—a database. It has long been the foundational land cover source for scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers across the United States, and now the next generation of USGS land cover mapping is here. This new release includes land cover data of the United States for every year back to 1985, so it is now called Annual NLCD.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools (LANDFIRE) project, which is commemorating its 20th year of providing geospatial data to support natural resource management and wildland fire planning. LANDFIRE brings a lot of data together, over 30 data products, into one place. The publicly available, consistent data maps disturbance to the landscape and vegetation condition, which can be useful to virtually any application that deals with what's occurring on the landscape. LANDFIRE has now been doing this for 20 years, and we talk with some of the people who have been working on LANDFIRE that entire time.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk to forest ecologist Jim Lutz about the effort to map fires in Utah. Fire research in the West is dominated by the study of large fires, but the forests in Utah are different. Utah typically does not have a lot of large fires as other western states do. So to better understand the differences that the specific Utah vegetation types have in their response to fire, a fire atlas for the state was developed. This data helps inform land managers about the implications for forest management and for prescribed fire planning.

This Eyes on Earth episode is the third in our series on using Landsat for coastal studies. We talk to physical geographer Jeff Danielson about bathymetry and how it is critical for coastal modeling. Bathymetry captures the shape of underwater topography, and satellite-derived bathymetry helps fill in areas where there are data gaps. Even though Landsat was designed to image land, it's a big part of this work because of its systematic temporal coverage. Besides that, high-resolution data from sonar and lidar are too labor intensive to collect everywhere. Therefore, they use all these sources together to get a better picture of bathymetry, especially in remote areas. This modeling helps with studying changes to shorelines such as storm surge, sediment transport, and flood damage.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talked with some of the interns who worked at EROS this summer. They shared their experiences learning about the cloud, AI, wildland fire research, terrestrial lidar scanning, and more. The common theme among them was recognizing the value of the EROS mission and noticing the passion their co-workers demonstrated in their work. They also shared advice for future interns at EROS.

This episode of Eyes on Earth is the second in a series about how Landsat is helping researchers study coastal changes. The first one was about mapping changes to beaches in California and using Landsat to create models to predict how the coastline may change in the future because of sea level rise and coastal erosion. For this episode, we talk with Robbi Bishop-Taylor, coastal Earth observation scientist at Geoscience Australia, about how he takes advantage of one of Landsat's best features—time. Using Landsat data back to the 1980s and Open Data Cube to make the dataset openly available, researchers can see where shorelines are eroding and where they are growing around the entire coastline of Australia. Using sub-pixel mapping, they can make Landsat's 30-meter pixels even more detailed while taking advantage of Landsat's long archive.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we begin a series on Landsat's usefulness in coastal studies. First, we talk with Sean Vitousek, a USGS research oceanographer, about changes to beaches in California and how he is using Landsat and other data to create models that can predict how the coastline may change in the future because of sea level rise and coastal erosion. Landsat's global reach stretches back decades—that, along with its free availability, can help in planning for the prevention and adaptation to future hazards along the coast. See how Landsat complements other data and ground truth studies, and how machine learning plays a part in this study as well.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with Kristi Kline about the constant changes and innovations that have been needed at EROS to keep up with changes in computer tech and data processing. Kline has been a part of helping to implement these changes over the past 27 years and is now retiring at the end of May 2024. We discuss her favorite memories like attending the Landsat 8 launch, and being there when Google first approached EROS to help them create an early version of Google Earth with Landsat images.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with several people involved with the next Landsat mission, targeted for launch around 2030. While that may seem like a ways into the future, it takes a lot of work to prepare for such a big mission. In Part 2 of this two-part series on Landsat Next, we'll hear about what needs to be done before launch to prepare the ground system, data processing and data calibration. Be sure to also listen to Part 1, where we talk about how different Landsat Next will be from previous Landsat missions, and what scientists are really looking forward to with this mission.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with several people involved with the next Landsat mission. In Part 1, we'll hear about how different Landsat Next will be from previous Landsat missions and how its additional spectral bands, higher resolution and 6-day revisit will benefit science and society. Addressing the needs of the Landsat user community was a high priority in developing the mission, so we talk about what scientists are really looking forward to with Landsat Next. The upcoming Part 2 episode will share details about technical preparations, such as the ground system and data processing and validation.

Landsat has documented changes all over the world for over 50 years. Changes in polar regions are happening especially rapidly. But it's dark in polar regions much of the time. Therefore, a new acquisition scheme is adding more imagery of these dark, polar regions so these changes can be studied in more detail, even in polar twilight. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about this project, called the Landsat Extended Acquisition of the Poles (LEAP).

Women have been crucial to the EROS workforce from the very beginning in a variety of areas, from customer service and computers to film processing and administration. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we're highlighting the science work that women have been part of, which includes plenty of variety on its own, including the mapping of landscapes and wildfire burn severities and monitoring water. Our guests include June Thormodsgard, who worked at EROS from 1979-2012 and shares about the past while offering advice for women working now at EROS.

Typically, we use Landsat data to study changes on the land—you know, Landsat. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn how satellite images and pixels of water, along with actual water samples, are helpful in determining the productivity of lakes across the United States. We talk with Mendenhall Fellow and Research Geographer Dr. Michael Meyer about a recently released, freely accessible dataset that uses a metric called lake trophic state to validate the Landsat observations of thousands of lakes. The dataset was also named a USGS Open Science Success Story as part of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's 2023 “Year of Open Science” campaign.

Terry Sohl helped develop the National Land Cover Database, NLCD, when he first arrived, and now he's overseeing significant improvements to the widely used product. But that's just one part of his new role. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, Sohl provides an overview of the science efforts at EROS and how artificial intelligence and machine learning help scientists focus more on the work that helps society. He also shares his vision for the future.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we aim to separate science fiction from science fact when it comes to how Landsat satellites and the EROS Center are portrayed in popular media. To do that, we consulted experts on a range of potential uses, including military, heat signatures, paleontology, and forests.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we spoke with Mikael Hiestand, a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow. Using algorithms developed at EROS, Mikael is working on near-term drought forecasting. With synthetic Landsat data, he found that predicting evapotranspiration could be used as a means of drought prediction and monitoring. The Mendenhall Fellowship allows people who have just completed their PhD an opportunity to work on research with USGS scientists and prepare for their career.

First responders need reliable, accurate mapping capabilities as quickly as possible in the wake of a disaster—and they don't have time to download and organize it. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn how the USGS Geospatial Information Response Team draws data from multiple sources to show what an area looked like before an event as well as after, creating accessible, usable maps and data sets for those bringing relief.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear from several EROS staff members and university graduate students who took part in our Fall Poster Session. Lively conversations filled the EROS atrium during the hour-long event. Participants got to learn from one another as they shared their work. We talked to a few of them to get quick summaries of their research.

The Landsat Program is considered the gold standard for satellite Earth-observation imagery. To keep it that way, the USGS EROS Flight Operations Team continually monitors the flight paths of the Landsat satellites to make sure they stay at a consistent 705-kilometer altitude. That means frequently speeding it up to counter the effects of atmospheric drag. But that's not all. The team accounts for solar activity, space junk, and other factors to keep the satellites safe. Landsat 8's 100^th^ Drag Make-Up maneuver in October 2023 gives us the opportunity, in this episode of Eyes on Earth, to talk about these and the other maneuvers the flight team executes and how they work.

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) has a long history as the definitive U.S. land cover product. But the newer Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) effort takes a longer look back in time. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn how the two projects at EROS, both based on 30-meter resolution Landsat satellite data, are merging to bring the strengths of each to future data releases under the NLCD name. This is the second of two episodes discussing land cover work at EROS, with the first focused on earlier pioneering efforts.

Several decades ago, USGS EROS employees were pioneers in land cover mapping—turning satellite imagery into a record of what covers the land, from farmland to forest to urban areas. National and global datasets with a variety of uses resulted from these efforts. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we explore some of this history, along with how it benefited people at the time and the mapping efforts that would follow. Our next episode will look at two modern efforts at EROS, NLCD and LCMAP, and how their strengths are merging for the next generation of land cover and change products.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we focus on Alaska. Rich in wildlife and natural resources, not to mention its sheer size, Alaska has long been a source of fascination for remote sensing scientists. But it is also a source of frustration, with frequent cloud and snow cover and months of darkness each year. Three EROS researchers well versed in interpreting Landsat imagery from Alaska shared their insights about the Last Frontier.

At the USGS EROS 50th anniversary events on August 17-19, 2023, a special effort was made to include alumni who had worked at the center, especially those from the earliest years of EROS' existence. This episode of Eyes on Earth is the second to highlight their stories, with emphasis on science, technology, and EROS' international outlook.

At the USGS EROS 50th anniversary events on August 17-19, 2023, a special effort was made to include alumni who had worked at the center, especially those from the earliest years of EROS' existence. This episode of Eyes on Earth highlights their stories, with emphasis on EROS' history and its dedicated employees.

LANDFIRE, short for Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools, is a key national data source for the management of wildfires, management of the plant materials that fuel fires, and planning for prescribed fires across all 50 states and the U.S. territories. The data products, partly derived from satellite imagery, are generated at EROS through a partnership between the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service, with The Nature Conservancy as an additional partner. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about how LANDFIRE is including more up-to-date information than ever about disturbances to the land.

EROS Center Director Pete Doucette has been at EROS for a fairly short stretch of the center's 50-year history, but his passion for the mission of EROS and its opportunities in the future are clear in this episode of Eyes on Earth. He shares the historic event he would have enjoyed being part of in the past, and he gives insights about remote sensing work at EROS going forward.

As USGS EROS turns 50 this month, our Eyes on Earth podcast also marks a big moment: Episode 100. To celebrate, we bring together some treasured moments from previous episodes in which people inside and outside of EROS share their thoughts on EROS and its role in the world of remote sensing, including as keeper of all Landsat satellite data.

EROS has a long history of reaching out to universities to welcome interns who can both contribute to the center and gain valuable skills and experience. A good number of them went on to spend their careers at EROS, some for more than three decades. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, these interns who stayed emphasized above all the mission—observing Earth remotely, recording the changes and applying those to science—as their motivation for remaining at EROS. However, all of them also mentioned another key word that inspired them to stay: camaraderie.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the 50-year history of EROS efforts to preserve the environment and conserve energy. EROS was born in the '70s, the same decade as Earth Day, the EPA, and the oil crisis. Environmentally conscious decisions implemented by both the EROS Center and the employee association include reclaiming silver from photo processing, using solar panels to heat the water needed for that process, and starting a vanpool.

Satellites capture an incredible variety of views of Earth. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with the three engineers at USGS EROS who started the USGS Earth As Art project. The Earth As Art origin story is an example of the initiative and creativity of EROS staff. This stunningly visual product grabs the public's attention—and then leads to conversations about the value of remote sensing with satellites.

In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk with Peder Nelson about generational science and the responsibility we have to future generations to study our changing planet. It takes more than just data to make sense of land change. And while remote sensing scientists work with the deep archive of Landsat and other land data available from the USGS EROS Center, everyone can put themselves on the timeline of Landsat data. Citizen science projects allow anyone to participate in the observations that help us understand the world around us.

The members of the five-year Landsat Science Teams, led jointly by the USGS and NASA with a strong tie to EROS, have brought a wide breadth of expertise, backgrounds and geographic locations to the table. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn how members have explored strategies for the effective use of archived Landsat data and integration of future data, and how they have helped identify Landsat user needs for upcoming satellite sensors, including those on the future Landsat Next.  

South Dakota State University opened its Remote Sensing Institute even before the launch of Landsat 1 and the selection of South Dakota as the location for EROS. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about some of the collaborations that SDSU and EROS have both benefited from, including research projects centered on Landsat and other data sources, instrument calibration and validation, and trainings, presentations and workshops. SDSU faculty and EROS staff have ventured back and forth, and SDSU students have worked as interns and found employment at EROS.  

Working with film has always been part of EROS' 50-year history. How did EROS end up with an extensive film archive, and how are we making that data available to users? In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the custom scanners built in-house from discarded parts to digitally capture historical aerial photos and declassified spy satellite images. These Phoenix systems have scanned millions of images and still have a lot of work to do.

The Don Lee Kulow Library has been supporting scientific research at EROS since before the facility opened its doors in 1973. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, librarian Carol Deering explains how, rather than becoming obsolete with the advent of instant access to online journals, libraries are even more crucial for the discovery of previous studies and for gauging the reach and real-world effects of research done by EROS scientists. She also talks about the history of EROS and describes a one-time quest for documents that stretched from UC Berkeley to the Library of Congress to Australia and Kenya.

AmericaView aims to advance Earth observation education through a network of programs based at universities in more than 40 states. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about AmericaView's goals and how AmericaView and its member states explain remote sensing efforts to society in a variety of ways, including outreach to students who range from elementary to graduate school. We also give examples of the organization's remote sensing research and describe AmericaView's ties with the USGS and with Landsat.

Originally called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, Landsat 8 launched on February 11, 2013. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we talk about the 10^th^ anniversary of Landsat 8 being in orbit and its value to the remote sensing community. While we cannot predict the future, it does look promising that Landsat 8 can sustain that continuity for more years to come.

When the snow gets deep and the wind blows, it can be challenging for workers to travel to the USGS EROS Center, located several miles north of Sioux Falls, SD, on what used to be farmland. Most can telecommute these days, but in this episode of Eyes on Earth, we discover how essential employees ensure there is in-person continuous monitoring of Landsat ground station operations during winter weather—sometimes even requiring an overnight stay.

Designed to last three years, Landsat 5 was launched in 1984 and transmitted data until the launch of Landsat 8 in 2013. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about some of the challenges—and adrenaline rushes—Landsat 5 gave the flight operations team as it aged, as well as the fondness our two guests came to have for the satellite's unique personality and the whole team as they served on it during the satellite's twilight years. In October 2022, the Flight Operations Team won the 2020 Group Pecora Award during the 22^nd^ William T. Pecora Memorial Remote Sensing Symposium.

Designed to last three years, Landsat 5 launched in 1984 and transmitted data until the launch of Landsat 8 in 2013. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we learn about the significance of this satellite, which set a Guinness World Record for “Longest Operating Earth Observation Satellite.” Our two guests served on the flight operations team in the satellite's twilight years and describe its importance to the unbroken record of Landsat data. They also share their personal connections with the satellite – including a journey from watching the launch on a monitor at EROS to eventually leading the team.

The USGS EROS Center is the home of the Landsat satellite archive. This data center and science center located on a former farm near Sioux Falls, SD, is one of the largest civilian archives of land imaging in the world. In this episode of Eyes on Earth, we discuss what visitors to EROS will learn on a tour, including examples of land change seen by Landsat and why EROS is located where it is. Find out how to contact the EROS Outreach Coordinator to schedule a tour, group visit, or school or civic presentation.