For more than four decades, the NASA/USGS Landsat program has provided incredible details about Earth's land surface. Landsat's many applications range from monitoring vegetation to tracking wildfires to imaging algal blooms. The vast array of freely accessible data from Landsat offers great opportunities for discovery, but knowing where to begin can be overwhelming, especially for those new to NASA's Earth observation data archive.
Two new step-by-step tutorials are here to help you easily find the Landsat surface reflectance data you need using NASA's Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AppEEARS) tool.
The first tutorial demonstrates how to access Landsat data for a geospatial area of interest (AOI). An AOI is a defined geographic region with spatial extent, typically represented by polygons. AOIs are used to focus data analysis on specific regions, such as parks, watersheds, or disaster areas.
The second tutorial demonstrates how to access Landsat data for a point of interest (POI). A POI is a specific location defined by latitude and longitude coordinates, lacking spatial extent. POIs are used for location-specific data access, particularly for time series analysis, correlation studies, and model validation.