Long-term time series of the Earth's land-surface observations from space

Abstract

This overview describes those satellite time series that represent at least a 20-year-long record of land-surface observations. The focus is on the optical remote-sensing measurements to study and monitor land-surface characteristics at spatial resolutions from tens of metres to a few kilometres. The objective is to draw the attention of the science community to the longest time series of space observations of the Earth's characteristics available in the US data archives. We highlight the moderate resolution data record from Landsat – the longest record of land observations from space. The utility of Landsat data for time series analyses has increased tremendously during the past few years since the data became freely available. Our intention is to give as much information on the data availability as possible with references in peer-reviewed journals and current websites, where users can find further details on the features of the data sets described here.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr Chris Justice (University of Maryland), Dr Ivan Csiszar and Dr Peter Romanov, both at NOAA/NESDIS, for reviewing the article and providing constructive comments. Dr Feng Gao (ERT/NASA GSFC) provided the analysis of the Illinois crop phenology. Comments by three anonymous reviewers are appreciated.