Indian Satellite Imagery to Help Monitor Landscape Change in the U.S.
Resourcesat data that are important for understanding changes associated with agriculture, forestry, phenology, and other applications are now available in the USGS archive.
An agreement signed July 9, 2016, between the Indian Space Research Organization and USGS allows ISRO to receive and use Landsat 7 and 8 data over India, while USGS receives ISRO’s Resourcesat-2 data collected over the U.S.
Resourcesat-2 carries the Advanced Wide-Field sensors AWiFS A and B, and the Linear Imaging Self-Scanning sensors LISS-3 and LISS-4. Full U.S. coverage, including Hawaii and Alaska, is available from AWiFS and LISS-3.
Resourcesat-2 operates in a sun-synchronous orbit 817 km (about 508 miles) above the Earth. It takes about 100 minutes to orbit the Earth once, and completes about 14 orbits per day. LISS-3, with its 140-km swath, covers the entire Earth in a 24-day cycle. AWiFS, with its wider 740-km swath, covers Earth in 5 days.
Both sensors acquire four distinct spectral bands in the green, red, near infrared, and short-wave infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. These bands line up approximately with Landsat Thematic Mapper, Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus, and Operational Land Imager green, red, near infrared, and short-wave infrared 1 bands. The LISS-3 sensor is more comparable to the OLI sensor in resolution – 24 meters – and coverage, while the AWiFS sensor has a 56-meter resolution but a much wider swath.
Users can download AWiFS and LISS-III imagery through EarthExplorer. Product options include a Level 1 geometrically corrected standard product, and a Level 1 precision terrain corrected product where precision correction is feasible.
Along with all data acquired over the U.S. from Resourcesat-2 starting in August 2016 and continuing today, USGS distributes data from ISRO’s earlier Resourcesat-1 satellite collected over the U.S. from 2003 through 2007.
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