Landsat Data Download and Usage in MICRODEM

Landsat Intro

Set up a free account with USGS.  Download at no charge from three locations, which all act a little differently and may show different coverage.

• EarthExplorer site  and directions probably the best choice to get just a single scene and pick the best image since it shows a thumbnail.  Get Landsat Collection 1 Level-1
• Sentinel-2 Hub and Playground: ESA has a better online viewing capability for Landsat and Sentinel-2, but not a download option.  You can find data there, and extract "dumb pictures" (i.e. no registration), and then download from EarthExplorer
• Additional USGS Options, which have not been recently verified
  • GloVis
  • LandsatLook Viewer.  
    • Must zoom in the see the data; scale shows in lower left corner of the screen.
    • View scenes, with some contrast enhancement, with option to download
    • View cart with option in the upper left of the data table
    • May be a limit on how many files you can get at a time

Finding scenes by path/row

Manage Landsat data

Landsat file formats and file naming conventions

MICRODEM will create the following subfolders in the directory with a Landsat scene if you attempt any computation analysis:

• band_hist: databases with the frequency histograms, one per band.
• princ_componenets: the principal components image in MICRODEM DEM format, one file for each component computed.
• unsup_class: unsupervised classification, in MICRODEM DEM format, a VAT file, and metadata.

Key Remote Sensing Options in MICRODEM

Landsat online viewers

• http://changematters.esri.com/compare compare two scenes from predetermined time periods, and see change in NDVI.
• Current Landsat (mostly Landsat 8) at https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/start-using-landsat-on-aws/

Last revision 2/22/2022