Preface
Introduction
We have always searched for ways to better understand the Earth’s terrain. Our ancestors likely scaled trees and climbed hills to acquire better vantage points to better understand their surroundings. We later took to the air and gained a much broader perspective aboard balloons and airplanes. In 1972, our approach to Earth Observation was forever transformed when NASA launched the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (also known as Landsat 1). This was the first satellite mission designed to look down (as opposed to looking ‘out’) to inventory, monitor, and study our planet. The success of Landsat 1 led to further Landsat missions, with each succeeding mission equipped with more a sophisticated payload system. The Landsat program has continuously gathered data about our planet for over 50 years. Landsat 9, launched in 2021, is the most recent and technologically sophisticated mission. The Landsat data archive, which includes millions of scenes available through the USGS’s Earth Explorer, provides scientific data and actionable information for an array of organizations, businesses, and applications.
Landsat Next, expected to launch in 2030, represents the future of this critical program. The Landsat Next mission will improve temporal, spectral, and spatial data resolutions to support current application needs, while also responding to the informational demands of the future. Getting Landsat 1 to the launchpad was a herculean effort that was nothing short of visionary. It is just as exciting to look into the future and wonder how the program will continue to evolve and further contribute to and impact society.
The data collected through the Landsat program serves as a cornerstone for Earth Observation, as the mission supports an array of business applications that have, to date, been nothing short of profound. These contributions will likely be even more pronounced as our planet faces new challenges. In 1972, when Landsat 1 was launched, our planet supported 3.8 billion people. Fifty years later, with the launch of Landsat 9, the Earth’s population had doubled, to 7.9 billion. By the time Landsat Next is launched, the world population is projected to reach 8.5 billion, which has obvious implications for the management of our planet’s finite resources.
Scientific data, collected through Landsat’s Earth Observation missions are critical to providing informed decisions that serve to guide farming operations, manage water resources, sustain our forests, plan our cities, and monitor and manage all of the spaces in between. There is no more efficient means to help manage human needs moving forward. Landsat, and other Earth Observation platforms, are critical to steer management policy, now, more than ever.
Earth Observation requires more than comprehensive data archives, new sensors, and related technologies. We need to ensure that the future workforce has the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to properly utilize these data, to support decisions based on evidence, not conjecture. It is with this in mind that this book was conceived.
Book origins and target audience
This book was directly written to respond to the needs of this evolving industry. Sensor platforms and related technologies are rapidly evolving, improving, and becoming more cost-effective. These advances provide additional opportunities. Businesses are increasingly harnessing remotely sensed data to better understand Earth’s processes. Remote sensing is now a mission-critical technology that provides information critical to essential operations including agriculture; disaster management and mitigation; urban planning; and the monitoring, management, and sustainable utilization of our natural resources, including our forests, extensive grasslands, and water.
Many educators have long recognized this demand, which infuses STEM concepts but have been unable to respond to the need. During a 2018 remote sensing workshop, a group of educators mentioned that they did not have access to specialized remote sensing software, and to hands-on instructional workbooks. These issues were identified as barriers to providing remote sensing classroom instruction.
Esri’s ArcGIS® Pro software provides image analysis tools that can be used by both novice and experienced analysts. This software is widely available to educators in many states, and at many educational levels (including high school, 2-year, and 4-year college/university) through statewide or institutional educational licensing agreements. It was in response to this need, that the first edition of the book was published – to help to bridge the divide between the need for a more literate remote sensing workforce, and the ability of educators to respond to this need by using more software that was already accessible to students.
The Landsat image archive provides a remote sensing digital playground for learners. The image archive is global and includes over fifty years of imagery. In addition, images can be downloaded through the USGS’s Earth Explorer at no cost. Educators can easily modify and customize the exercises in this book to respond to local, regional, or national issues, specific to almost any location on the earth. It is therefore not surprising that we have received requests from educators to translate this book into different languages (Japanese and Korean come to mind). Landsat is a national treasure with a global reach. We hope that this resource can follow the same path.
The second edition of the book responds to software updates, changes to the USGS’s Earth Explorer, and integrates imagery from the newest Landsat mission (Landsat 9).
What this book covers
First, it is important to understand what this book does not cover. This book is not a standalone remote sensing textbook. This book does not provide a background in remote sensing concepts or theory. This book serves as a guide to using ArcGIS® Pro as a remote sensing software tool; it does not provide sufficient discussion or information on making choices in remote sensing analysis specific to any individual project.
This book should serve as a supplement to a remote sensing textbook, and is intended to serve as a hands-on workbook (with just a splash of relevant remote sensing theory included along the way) to provide a general understanding of basic remote sensing-related technical approaches. Topics include:
- Searching, selecting, and downloading satellite imagery from the USGS’s Earth Explorer
- Manipulating data in ArcGIS Pro
- Displaying Landsat 9 imagery (as well as image products collected by other satellite and UAS platforms)
- Enhancing and analyzing remotely sensed imagery.
The objective of this book is to provide learners with hands-on applications and specific instructions to work with remote sensing imagery using ArcGIS® Pro. By working through the examples provided, it is anticipated that learners will receive a cursory baseline of remote sensing image analysis experience, supported by Landsat 9. Hopefully, these experiences will spur curiosity and will provide further motivation to investigate and explore the introduced topics in greater depth.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge their institutions for their support, including the Virginia Tech Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, The Ohio State University Department of Geography, and the Virginia Cooperative Extension.
Dr. James Campbell, professor emeritus in the Department of Geography at Virginia Tech, provided profound leadership and vision through the first edition of this book. Dr. Campbell’s contributions, experience, and knowledge remain heavily imprinted throughout the second edition of this book as well. With that being said, none of the typos or any factual errors contained in this book should be attributed to Dr. Campbell.
This resource was developed under a relatively tight deadline in order to meet the needs of the pending academic semester. While we have burned the midnight oil to make the text ready and available for educational use, we also fully recognize that the text requires improvements in many areas. Please consider this resource as a work in progress.
Major Contributors:
- Tammy Parece developed and wrote the exercise content for each chapter.
- John A. McGee served as the originator, general editor, coordinator, and Landsat 9 updater.
- Chérie Aukland served as the technical editor.
- Michelle Klopfer provided the layout design, format editing, and publishing support.
- Michelle Klopfer and John A. McGee designed the cover. Cover image: Landsat 9 (Scene reference LC09_L2SP_195011_20220825_20230401_02_T1).
Chérie Aukland serves as the video tutorial designer, narrator, and editor for the video tutorials that accompany this book (forthcoming in 2024). Video tutorials are available from https://www.youtube.com/@VaGeoExtension/playlists .
Other Contributors:
We would also like to acknowledge the following individuals for their contributions:
- John Layman, Master’s student at The Ohio State University, proofread an early version of this manuscript.
- Ethan Lucas, MS student in Geography at The Ohio State University, acted as a technical adviser.
- John Cole McGee, BS student in the Ecology, Energy, and Policy Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, served as the alt-text editor.
- John Nowlin, Assistant Professor of Geospatial Technologies at Arkansas State University, and his students who worked through a draft version of the manual as part of their lab assignments.
- The Ohio State University students in GEOG 5225 Geographic Applications in Remote Sensing who worked through a draft version of the manual as part of their lab assignments.
Support for this book was provided through the Virginia Geospatial Extension Program and VirginiaView (http://www.virginiaview.net/), through AmericaView, Inc. (www.americaview.org); the Virginia Space Grant Consortium (www.vsgc.org), through the Geospatial Technician Education for Aircraft Systems (GeoTEd-UAS) project (www.geoted-uas.org). This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Geological Survey under Grant/Cooperative Agreement No. G18AP00077 and the NSF ATE DUE 2000715.
Disclaimer
The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Geological Survey. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Geological Survey.