The U.S. Department of the Interior announced the Landsat 2030 International Partnership Initiative recently. This partnership will enhance the government and partnership's ability to manage land and resources more effectively.

 

The Landsat partnership, between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA, is a groundbreaking satellite system that was designed to collect data about Earth's resources including formations, habitats, farmlands, cities, lakes, glaciers, coastlines, and more. Imagery will be provided at landscape-scale resolution to best improve land use.

"As the impacts of the climate crisis intensify in the United States and across the globe, Landsat satellites are crucial to providing data and imagery to help make science-based decisions on key issues including water use, wildfire impacts, coral reef degradation, glacier and ice-shelf retreat, and tropical deforestation," said USGS Director David Applegate. "The U.S. Geological Survey is proud to support the continued science and understanding of environmental and climate changes that are occurring-not only on the public lands managed by the Department of the Interior-but throughout the United States and across the world."

The satellite system, which has been around for over 50 years, has allowed the U.S. to develop important science and technological strategies. Currently, there are 18 active International Ground Stations around the world across 12 countries which allows Landsat to augment data collection. With that, Landsat is able to monitor water use like amount of water consumed in irrigation, track wildfire risk such as fire fuel projections based on invasive grasses, monitor urban hotspots where heat related illness could become more prevalent, and catalog forests by showing pest infestations.