Viewing Fields

More than 75 percent of Oklahoma’s land is used by the agriculture industry. Oklahoma produces a variety of crops in addition to wheat and cotton, including corn, soybeans, sorghum, rye, hay, peanuts, and pecans. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (UDSA’s) Cropland Data Layer (CDL) gives information about each State’s fields, such as crop type, acreage, and yield, based on a foundation of Landsat and other data. The annual data layer reveals what is planted, how much, and where, as well as where the land has changed in use. This information about the food supply helps agricultural producers and others in the industry make prudent decisions (USDA, 2022).

Characterizing Wildfires

A dry winter can turn one summer’s lush, rain-fed grassland into brittle fuel for raging fires the next year. This scenario led to the Anderson Creek Fire, which started in the spring of 2016 in northern Oklahoma. Driven across the border by wind, the Anderson Creek Fire turned into Kansas’ largest wildfire in modern history—until the Starbuck Fire started in Oklahoma the following spring and spread to Kansas. Landsat data can provide a before-and-after landscape view of the fires and show their severity and extent. The Landsat-based program Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) has mapped this information for large fires across the United States from 1984 to the present (2022)—nearly 29,000 fires so far. MTBS information supports fire management strategies, land management, and research about fires and fire recovery (MTBS, 2022).

Examining Tornado Damage

Oklahomans are quite familiar with severe weather and tornadoes; in fact, the first official tornado forecast and warning in the United States were provided in 1948 by Tinker Air Force Base near Oklahoma City. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) and Storm Prediction Center are in Norman. Landsat imagery can provide a useful view of the location and extent of tornado damage, especially in a State that averages 57 tornadoes each year but experienced 149 in 2019. A study by University of Oklahoma and NSSL researchers also used Landsat data to examine variations of tornado damage in 17 urban, forest, and grassland areas in the southeastern United States—including 3 in Oklahoma—between 2002 and 2015, as well as recovery in forests (Kingfield and De Beurs, 2017).

Landsat—Critical Information Infrastructure for the Nation

Landsat is the most widely used land remote sensing data source within Federal civilian agencies. Local, State, Tribal, and Federal agencies use Landsat to monitor and forecast a wide range of land surface phenomena. Information from Landsat contributes to day-to-day decisions on land, water, and resource use that protect life and property; safeguard the environment; advance science, technology and education; support climate change resiliency; and grow the U.S. economy. Landsat’s imagery provides a landscape-level view of land surface, inland lake, and coastal processes, both natural and human-induced. Landsat enables us to better understand the scope, nature, and speed of change to the natural and built environment.

Businesses draw upon Landsat data to provide customer-specific applications to improve logistics, resource allocation, and investment decisions. Commercial space-imaging firms leverage Landsat data to refine product offerings and support new information services. A 2017 USGS study determined the total annual economic benefit of Landsat data in the United States to be $2.06 billion, far surpassing its development and operating costs (Straub and others, 2019).

Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 provide 8-day repeat coverage of the Earth’s land surfaces. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the USGS are currently reviewing the findings from a joint Architecture Study Team, which will inform the design and implementation approach for Landsat Next, the follow-on mission to Landsat 9. Landsat 9 and its successors are planned to provide a sustainable, space-based system to extend the 50-year Landsat series of high-quality global land imaging measurements—the world’s longest time series of the Earth’s land surface.

The long-term availability of consistent and accurate Landsat data, combined with a no-cost data policy, allows users to analyze extensive geographic areas and better understand and manage long-term trends in land surface change. New cloud computing and data analytics technologies use Landsat data in a wide range of decision-support tools for Government and industry. Much like global positioning systems and weather data, Landsat data are used every day to help us better understand our dynamic planet.