Since 1972, the joint NASA/ U.S. Geological Survey Landsat series of Earth Observation satellites have continuously acquired images of the Earth’s land surface, providing uninterrupted data to help land managers and policymakers make informed decisions about natural resources and the environment.
Landsat is a part of the USGS National Land Imaging (NLI) Program. To support analysis of the Landsat long-term data record that began in 1972, the USGS. Landsat data archive was reorganized into a formal tiered data collection structure. This structure ensures all Landsat Level 1 products provide a consistent archive of known data quality to support time-series analysis and data “stacking”, while controlling continuous improvement of the archive, and access to all data as they are acquired. Collection 1 Level 1 processing began in August 2016 and continued until all archived data was processed, completing May 2018. Newly-acquired Landsat 8 and Landsat 7 data continue to be processed into Collection 1 shortly after data is downlinked to USGS EROS.
Acknowledgement or credit of the USGS as data source should be provided by including a line of text citation such as the example shown below.
(Product, Image, Photograph, or Dataset Name) courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey
Example: Landsat-8 image courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey