nicar20-imagery-sources

Sources for earth imagery

Data and Imagery Viewers

• Colorado State University RAMMB Slider
  • GOES 16/17 and Himawari
• NOAA View
  • Daily ocean, land and atmospheric data
• NASA Worldview
  • Satellite data cornucopia
• University of Wisconsin-Madison SSEC/CIMSS RealEarth
  • Satellite data cornucopia
• Resource Watch
  • Hundreds of data sets, many of them climate related
• Global Forest Watch
  • Data and tools for monitoring forests
• Planet.parts
  • Curated by Charlie Loyd
  • It is the most comprehensive list of near-realtime Earth observation resources out there.

Direct data sources

• USGS Earth Explorer

  • Landsat
    • Longest-running enterprise for acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth
    • Similar spectral bands make for easier, fairer mapping of change over time
  • USDA NAIP (US only, no AK or HI 😬)
    • ~1 meter RGB+NIR imagery
    • New images every two years, starting in roughly 2003
    • Also available here
  • Sentinel-2
  • SRTM as well as other elevation datasets
  • Declassified spy satellite imagery from the 1960s and 1970s.

• NOAA CLASS

  • VIIRS
    • US-only VIIRS for last week here
  • GOES-R
  • Not the easiest to use

• Copernicus Open Access Hub

  • Sentinel-1 synthetic-aperture radar
  • Sentinel-2 (like Landsat)
  • Sentinel-3 (like MODIS or VIIRS)
  • Sentinel-5P (greenhouse gas data)

• NASA EARTHDATA

  • Countless data products—go hunting!
  • Alaska Satellite Facility, a source for current and historic (back to the 1970s!) RADAR data, is available through this login

• GEO on AWS

  • Many, many datasets. Here are only a few:
    • Sentinel-2
    • Landsat 8
    • GOES
    • Mapzen Terrain Tiles

Sources through a platform or company

• Google Earth Engine
  • Too many datasets to list here
• Planet
  • High temporal resolution
  • Relatively high spatial resolution
  • Relatively low spectral resolution
• Maxar
  • High resolution RGB and synthetic-aperture radar data.
  • Cannot always share
• Iceye
  • High spatial and temporal resolution synthetic-aperture radar data
• Airbus
  • High resolution RGB and synthetic-aperture radar imagery.
• Blacksky
  • Plan for high temporal resolution
  • Relatively high spatial resolution
  • Relatively low spectral resolution

^{P.S. Hate clicking through dozens of links to figure out what the heck I'm talking about? Check out Joe Morrison's excellent post on How to Find the Most Recent Satellite Imagery Anywhere on Earth.}