GIS at NASA: Expanding the Understanding of Earth Science

Explore NASA Earth Observation Data

NASA data are available without restriction. Explore recent uses of data incorporating GIS technology.

NASA Earth Science Teams Support the Federal GIS Community

The Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program Geographic Information Systems Team (EGIST) and members of NASA’s Earth Science Division showcased GIS resources at the Esri Federal GIS Conference.

5-panel image showing various GIS maps with words GIS Day 2022 in white with words Geographic Information Systems in white below.

Celebrate GIS Day 2022!

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide powerful capabilities for visualizing, analyzing, and interacting with Earth science data.

this is an image of the Tropical Cyclone Dashboard on the Disasters Mapping Portal

Evolving GIS Technologies Advance Disaster Management

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a saying largely undisputed in its accuracy. There’s a reason several different languages and cultures have a version of this popular idiom. Graphics can convey in seconds what words need more time to say. When disasters strike, every minute and second becomes incredibly precious. During critical times, geographic information systems (GIS) become indispensable in disseminating data in a way everyday people can quickly understand.

New Getting Started with NASA Worldview Tutorial

In this tutorial, learn how to use NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Worldview imagery mapping and visualization application to explore and visualize NASA Earth science imagery to see hurricanes forming, wildfires spreading, icebergs drifting and more.

Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) APIs

GIBS APIs provide access to global, full-resolution satellite imagery in a highly responsible manner, enabling interactive exploration of Earth.

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See GIS in Action

Collaborate and create interactive applications combining high value data together in an interactive, informative, web-based application. Focusing on key topics or themes allows users to see the best available data from NASA to help them understand complex challenges facing our world.

Datasets have a story to tell. Engage and inspire your audience by combining text, images, and other multimedia content with maps. You have the local knowledge and expertise; now begin and sustain a meaningful connection with your users.

Learn about NASA Earthdata as Image Services

Image services are a way to process and share collections of imagery. This provides considerable flexibility and scalability for storing, processing, analyzing, and sharing imagery and raster products. These flexible and robust services can be comprised of a variety of data types, both large and small, and can be multiband or multidimensional.

These services leverage a powerful server backend 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.

Clients can connect to image services using an ArcGIS Server connection or via REST. Additionally, image services can be published with the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) Web Map Service (WMS) or Web Coverage Service (WCS) capabilities. By adding additional capabilities, clients can access your image service in an expanded variety of applications and devices.

ArcGIS Image Services can also be accessed and used inside open source tools such as QGIS and Jupyter Notebooks.

See NASA Data as Image Services in Action

Find and Use Image Services

Sentinel-2 Views

Sentinel-2 10 m multispectral, multitemporal, 13-band images with visual renderings and indices. This imagery layer is sourced from the ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-2 mission on Amazon Web Services (AWS) collections and is updated daily with new imagery.

Multispectral Landsat

Landsat multispectral and multitemporal imagery with on-the-fly renderings and indices for visualization and analysis. The Landsat 8 and 9 imagery in this layer is updated daily and is directly sourced from the USGS Landsat collection on AWS.

True Color - Corrected

This visualization represents a true color band combination (1-4-3) of data collected by the MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite and is most similar to how we see Earth’s surface.

Earth at Night (2016)

This layer presents a nighttime view of Earth that provides an informational and educational view of our planet.

Pansharpened Landsat

Landsat pansharpened and multitemporal 15 m imagery rendered on-the-fly as Natural Color with dynamic range adjustment (DRA) for visualization and analysis. It is updated daily with new imagery directly sourced from the USGS Landsat collection on AWS.