Background
The Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) 2018 assessment found that knowing where land surface vegetation and urban areas are changing would help satisfy the satellite needs of U.S. land monitoring agencies. The near-global Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) Surface Disturbance (DIST) data product suite uses imagery from eight optical and radar satellites (Harmonized Landsat-8/9 and Sentinel-2 A/B/C, Sentinel-1 A/C/D) to produce two products — at 30-m resolution every few days — that identify where and when the land surface has undergone disturbance, such as vegetation loss from fires, landslides, drought, urban growth, deforestation, and mining.
An annual optical DIST product will be available after a full year of disturbance granules have been generated. The optical DIST product was developed in partnership with the University of Maryland Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) group. Further information about the OPERA project and the DIST product suite can be found below.
Status
Some data are available now with additional data coming soon
DIST-ALERT-HLS has been in production since February 2023, with products available from NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC). Three annual assessments (DIST-ANN-HLS) for 2023, 2024, and 2025 are also available. DIST-S1 data is undergoing final development and testing and is scheduled to start production in 2026.
Solution Characteristics
| Products | DIST-ALERT-HLS | DIST-S1 |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | Harmonized Landsat 8/9 and Sentinel-2A/B/C (HLS) | Sentinel-1A/C/D |
| Processing Level | 3 | 3 |
| Temporal Coverage | January 2016 to September 2027 | January 2026 to September 2027 |
| Temporal Frequency | Sub-weekly | 12 day revisit per satellite, 6 days for constellation |
| Spatial Coverage | Near-global (all land masses except Antarctica) | Near-global (all land masses except Antarctica) |
| Spatial Resolution | 30 m | 30 m |
| Data Format | Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF | Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF |
Societal Impact
This solution provides maps of vegetation loss every few days that can be used to track wildfires and invasive species, monitor forest health and deforestation, and detect land cover change. Such maps are crucial in land management, forest and resource monitoring, and hazard response and recovery.
Solution Resources
Need help using this solution? For more information about the DIST product suite, visit the following resources:
- OPERA Overview
- OPERA DIST website
- OPERA DIST Applications Github
- OPERA DIST Product Suite: SNWG Solution Fact Sheet
- OPERA DIST on Earthdata SNWG Portal
- OPERA Stakeholder Engagement Program
Workshops and Open Meetings
| Title and Registration Link | Description | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Fifth OPERA Stakeholder Engagement Workshop | The fifth workshop provided updates on OPERA data products (including DIST) and how to access and leverage them for common applications. It also introduced the upcoming Vertical Land Motion (VLM) product suite. | Sept. 11, 2025 |
| Fourth OPERA Stakeholder Engagement Workshop | The fourth workshop provided updates on OPERA data products in production, preliminary validation of data products that were near-production, and an overview of upcoming products. End users had an opportunity to present their use (or planned use) of OPERA products. | July 19, 2024 |
| The Beginning of a New Era of Multidisciplinary NASA Satellite Data Products Enabled by the Satellite Needs Working Group | The SNWG is a government inter-agency organizational body established in 2016 to identify Earth observational gaps and data needs across the U.S. federal civilian agencies. The SNWG effort is a two-year process in which NASA identifies and ultimately implements a range of innovative solutions that benefit the entire Earth science community. In this session, we invited representatives from NASA’s SNWG Implementation Team (NSITE) to describe new capabilities and where to access the data. The discussion included the Harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2 (HLS), a cloud optimized dataset that standardizes common data bands from the two satellite constellations, effectively doubling the data available to the community. Another SNWG solution is the generation of a global surface water extent products that combine the data frequency of optical satellites and the cloud-penetrating capabilities of radar for a uniformed and frequent surface water product. Other solutions include new radiation and clouds products, global air quality, land surface disturbance, North America land deformation, vegetation indices suite with HLS, and planetary boundary layer products. | Dec. 13, 2023 |
| Third OPERA workshop: Introducing the OPERA Radiometric Terrain Corrected (RTC) Radar Backscatter and Coregistrated Single Look Complex (CSLC) Products | In this workshop, the OPERA team provided an update on the Dynamic Surface Water Extent and Surface Disturbance products. They also introduced provisional RTC and CSLC products. | June 27, 2023 |
| Second OPERA Workshop: Introducing OPERA Interim Products and Updates on Surface Water Extent and Disturbance Products | In this workshop, the OPERA team presented preliminary validation results for the surface water (DSWx) and DIST products, while also providing information on how to access them. | Sept. 2, 2022 |
| First OPERA Workshop: SNWG-2018 Surface Water Extent and Surface Disturbance Product | During this workshop, the OPERA team introduced the near-global surface water (DSWx) and DIST products to gather feedback from the user community. | Feb. 4, 2022 |