Esri said the app grants access to Landsat Level-2 multispectral imagery to inform organisations about natural resources and the environment.

Jointly managed by the USGS and NASA, Landsat is the longest-running spaceborne land observation program in history, Esri said. The Landsat program began in 1972 with the launch of Landsat 1, and with Landsat 4 in 1982, the program began providing mission-to-mission data continuity.

This data continuity is critical for reliable observation and analysis of Earth processes and changes over time.

"Landsat multispectral imagery is a critical tool for organisations that must track and document land use and land change associated with climate change, urbanisation, drought, wildfire, deforestation, and other natural processes and human activity," said Esri program manager for ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World Sean Breyer.

“This imagery is a record dating back over 40 years, constituting one of the most valuable sources for understanding land change from a temporal perspective. GIS not only makes data such as Landsat easy to access and share, but it also enables users to derive and disseminate valuable insights from them."

Through an intuitive user experience, the app leverages ArcGIS capabilities to unlock Landsat information.

The capabilities include the following:
- Visual exploration of a dynamic global mosaic of the best available Landsat scenes.
- On-the-fly multispectral band combinations and indices for visualisation and analysis.
- Interactive Find a Scene by location, sensor, time, and cloud cover.
- Visual change over time with Swipe and Animation modes.
- Spectral analysis for vegetation, water, land surface temperature, and more.

This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 14 February 2024.