Terrestrial ecosystems, land-based communities of creatures, plants, and their surrounding environment, are an expansive focus of NASA's Earth observations. Observing such ecosystems allows us to understand the function and health of our own planet while also seeding us with knowledge to analyze how other worlds work. Researchers studying terrestrial ecosystems delve into a variety of topics including hydrology, meteorology, vegetation and forestry, topography, and wildfire.

NASA has a powerful array of instruments for surveying ecosystems, including the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar. The datasets from these instruments detail ecosystems in many ways from vegetation indexes showing the extent of plant life in an area to synthetic aperture radar imagery offering precise topography measurements of forested peaks and valleys. In all, NASA's terrestrial ecosystem data give researchers accurate and exceptional information for studying natural life around the world.