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Description

At night, satellite images of Earth capture a uniquely human signal — artificial lighting. Remotely-sensed lights at night provide a new data source for improving our understanding of interactions between human systems and the environment. NASA has developed the Black Marble, a daily calibrated, corrected, and validated product suite, so night light data can be used effectively for scientific observations. 

Black Marble is playing a vital role in research on light pollution, illegal fishing, fires, disaster impacts and recovery, and human settlements and associated energy infrastructures. The data (originally retrieved from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) day night band sensor) has been corrected by multiple novel algorithms, providing high-quality, cloud-free, atmospheric-, terrain-, vegetation-, snow-, lunar-, and stray light-corrected nighttime radiances.

This webinar led by NASA's Applied Remote Sensing Training program (ARSET) focuses on building the skills needed to choose the appropriate nighttime lights product, acquire and understand Black Marble data, and how to use the data in analyses for tracking urbanization, electrification, and disaster monitoring.

This work was partially supported by the GEO Human Planet Project #16-GEO16-0055.

Access the Agenda (PDF, 0.4MB)

Prerequisites

If you wish to follow along with the demonstration associated with this webinar, please install QGIS.

Objectives

By the end of this training, participants will be able to: 

  • Understand the new capabilities of NASA’s Black Marble product suite and which product categories (VNP46A1 vs. VNP46A2) to use for different science applications
  • Learn the basics of how to acquire information in Black Marble nighttime lights data
  • Interpret Black Marble science data sets (SDS), quality flags, and create time-series analyses
  • Apply products in topics relevant to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), e.g. tracking urbanization, disaster recovery, and electrification

Target Audience

Local, regional, state, federal, and international organizations interested in global Earth system science and applications to topics relevant to the SDGs: tracking urbanization, disaster monitoring, and electrification.

Course Format

  • One 2-hour part

Sessions

Black Marble Background, Use, and Applications

Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020
  • Understanding nightlights (NTL) data collection and the variety of light sources that are captured in Black Marble data
  • Comparison of existing night lights products and new features
  • Technical description of Black Marble
  • Data download
  • Post-processing and quality assessment
  • Data applications (monitoring urbanization, electrification, and the impact of disasters on the electrical grid)

Materials

Homework

Citation

(2020). ARSET - Introduction to NASA’s "Black Marble" Night Lights Data. NASA Applied Remote Sensing Training Program (ARSET). https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/trainings/introduction-nasas-black-marble-night-lights-data. 

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Details

Last Updated

Dec. 18, 2025

Published

Dec. 3, 2020

Data Center/Project

Applied Remote Sensing Training Program (ARSET)