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GIS at NASA

Improving the Discovery, Access, and Use of Earth Science Data

Discover, explore, and access Geographic Information Systems (GIS) resources to better understand our planet. Using GIS, you can leverage NASA's Earth observations to perform analysis, create maps, and develop applications.

The vision of NASA's Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program is to identify and deliver high value Earth science data in formats compliant and compatible with GIS standards; to ensure data are interactive, interoperable, available, and GIS-enabled through primary GIS platforms; and to provide the maximum impact to research, education, and public user communities requiring data visualization and spatial analysis. Below, learn how NASA is working to enable this mission.

NASA Earthdata as Esri ArcGIS Image Services

Image services are a way to process and share collections of imagery. These types of services provide considerable flexibility and scalability for storing, processing, analyzing, and sharing raster products, including multiband or multidimensional data. 

These services leverage a powerful server back end to perform the required processing on-the-fly and dynamic mosaicking of images. These applications can access the imagery as a seamless mosaic or query into the metadata of each image to display only a selection of the data or apply processing across datasets to find differences or perform classification. These processes can include reprojection, orthorectification, clipping, the application of complex image processing algorithms, and more. 

The Earthdata GIS dashboard features a gallery of datasets enabled as web services to be used in GIS.

To host our collection of image services, NASA Earth Sciences has stood up an enterprise Earthdata Geographic Information System (EGIS), a resource for distributing cloud-native, GIS-ready NASA Earth observation data, services, and resources. The EGIS’ goal is to provide a consistent user experience across NASA programs and projects in order to enhance resource discovery through primary platforms commonly used by the GIS community. Within a browser window or desktop GIS software, these flexible and scalable services empower our users to visualize, explore, analyze, and share NASA Earth Observation data, all without having to download a single file. EGIS currently hosts 250 imagery layers, featuring data from missions such as the: VIIRS, TEMPO, POWER, and GPW.

Watch GIS-Focused Content

On NASA’s Earthdata YouTube channel, you can find a playlist dedicated to GIS at NASA Earth Sciences. The playlist features GIS tool deep dives, GIS data explorations, and helpful video tutorials and guides. If you’re just getting started, we recommend checking out “Increasing NASA Earth Science Data Accessibility with GIS,” which is an hour-long Earthdata webinar given by several GIS subject matter experts at NASA who explore using Earth Science’s specialized image, feature, and geoprocessing services to interact with GIS applications without manual data processing.

This is a screenshot of the user interface for the Earthdata GIS YouTube channel. There are boxes showing previews of each video with a description next to each box.
Graphic of Earth from space with a satellite and colorful circles of data visualization maps.

Tour NASA Earth Science StoryMaps

Scroll through these narrative resources created by NASA Earth Science to unearth the types of stories you can tell with our data. Click on the links below to check out the interactive text, images, GIFs, videos, and learning content offered below. 

Explore Thematic GIS Applications

You can create and explore interactive GIS products by combining high-value data together in an interactive, informative, web-based application. Below, you can find a webpage dedicated to highlighting these types of resources at NASA. Each of these applications and web maps are focused on key topics or themes that enable our users to discover the best available data from NASA that can be used to understand the complex challenges facing our world. 

View NASA Earth Science Thematic Web Maps

NASA Earth Science Thematic Web Maps webpage shows a grid of 9 satellite images of Earth.

Scroll through these narrative resources created by NASA Earth Science to unearth the types of stories you can tell with our data. Click on the images below to check out the interactive text, images, GIFs, videos, and learning content offered below. 

Explore Thematic GIS Applications

You can create and explore interactive GIS products by combining high-value data together in an interactive, informative, web-based application. Below, find resources focused on key topics or themes that allow users to see the best available data from NASA to help them understand complex challenges facing our world. 

View NASA Earth Science Thematic Web Maps.