The USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center Archive is home of the largest civilian collections of remotely sensed images of Earth’s land surface. The archive contains over 60 years of historical aerial photos and satellite imagery acquired by various government and commercial satellites and aircraft.
Key highlights about the EROS Archive:
- Serves as the national archive for remotely sensed land imagery acquired by civilian satellites and aircraft. Contains over 5 million satellite scenes covering land areas worldwide.
- Supports interactive search and discovery of archive holdings through the EarthExplorer tool. Users can find and order satellite, aerial and other remote sensing data products.
- Includes data from USGS Landsat satellites (over 50 years of data), as well as satellites like SPOT, Sentinel-2, and MODIS. Historical national aerial photography programs are also archived.
- Imagery and elevation data are used to study land cover change, agriculture, climate science, disasters, infrastructure planning and more. Over $2 billion in annual societal benefits estimated from Landsat data alone.
- EROS scientists use the archive to produce and distribute specialized land change monitoring data products to aid decision makers across government, research, and industry.
The vast EROS Archive and its research center support and enable better understanding of changes happening across Earth’s land surface through provision of historical and current remotely sensed imagery to users worldwide.