Satellites: Make Earth observations open access

Freely available satellite imagery will improve science and environmental-monitoring products, say Michael A. Wulder and Nicholas C. Coops.

NASA

The Landsat 8 satellite launched in February 2013 (artist's impression).

A new era of open-access satellite data has arrived. In 2008, the US Geological Survey (USGS) released for free to the public its Landsat archive, which dates back to the 1970s and is the world's largest collection of Earth imagery². Greater computing power is also enabling scientists to manipulate big data representing larger areas and with greater sophistication, to produce multibillion-pixel composite maps of land cover and change across regions, continents and the globe. Monitoring land-cover change in near-real time is now a reality.

http://www.nature.com/news/satellites-make-earth-observations-open-access-1.15804