Landsat – Greenest Pixel Yearly
Description of the layer
Mosaics created with Landsat 5 from 1984, Landsat 7 scenes from 2000 until 2014 and Landsat 8 from 2015 onwards. False color band combination NIR (Near Infrared), SWIR1 (Short-wave Infrared) and Red. These composites are created from all the scenes in each annual period beginning from the first day of the year and continuing to the last day of the year. All the images from each year are included in the composite, with the greenest pixel as the composite value, where the greenest pixel means the pixel with the highest value of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).
Landsat 7 Collection 1 Tier 1 Landsat 7 Collection 1 Tier 1 Annual Greenest-Pixel TOA Reflectance Composite
Greenest pixel mosaic with nir-swir1-red bands
The layer shows the vegetation intensity:
Orange colors represent high vegetation intensity and green colors represent low vegetation intensity
Spatial resolution
Global coverage
Pixel size:
30m x 30m
Temporal resolution
Mosaics available from 1984 - 2018
16 days revisit time
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – LANDSAT
Source data: LANDSAT
Since the first Landsat satellite launched in 1972, the mission has collected data on the forests, farms, urban areas and freshwater of our home planet, generating the longest continuous record of its kind. Decision makers from across the globe use freely available Landsat data to better understand environmental change, manage agricultural practices, allocate scarce water resources, respond to natural disasters and more.
Currently, both Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 are in a near-polar orbit of our planet. Each satellite repeats its orbital pattern every 16 days, with the two spacecraft offset so that each spot on Earth is measured by one or the other every eight days. As the Landsat satellites orbit, the instruments capture scenes across a swath of the planet that is 185 kilometers (115 miles) wide. Each pixel in these images is 30-meters across, which is about the size of a baseball infield, or — more important for resource management — an average U.S. crop field.
· Landsat data help decision makers and resource managers in an incredible range of fields. The freely-available information is used to help identify the type and distribution of major crops across the globe, measure how agriculture is expanding or shrinking in remote regions, and monitor crop health and the condition of pastures and rangelands.
· The mission will also continue providing a field-by-field view of the amount of water used for irrigation. This essential and precise information helps water resource agencies manage water use, settle water rights disputes in places like the American West, and anticipate and respond to water shortages. In places where water is scarce, Landsat has become an impartial and cost-effective tool to manage water use.
Data will also help scientists map Earth’s forests. With half-a-century’s worth of images showing the extent and health of forests, researchers can assess trends over time for both plantations and natural ecosystems. These Landsat observations will also help improve estimates of carbon stored in forests — an essential part of global carbon accounting programs.