Some of the tutorials help users just getting started—like how to access Landsat Collection 2 data through the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) in a commercial cloud environment and how to use the USGS/EROS Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Application Programming Interface (API) to efficiently search metadata and acquire the data they need. More knowledgeable users may benefit from the tutorials that describe best practices for radiance-to-reflectance scaling and time-series analysis. 

We highlight some of the newly added tutorials on this page. 

To browse through all available tutorials, visit the EROS User Services code repository. 

Are You Using the Most Current Data? 

The “Landsat Reprocessing: How to Keep Your Data Current” tutorial guides users on how to search the Bulk Metadata Service to compare their product lists with the Landsat archive’s inventory to keep their data current.

Occasionally, small subsets of the Landsat data archive need to be reprocessed – these events may be planned, or may be immediate, depending on the nature and magnitude of issue requiring correction. When Landsat data are reprocessed, all affected products are removed and regenerated using the newly processed data. This includes Level-1 and Level-2 products, U.S. Analysis Ready Data (U.S. ARD), and Level-3 science products. The USGS encourages users to replace Landsat data and the derived products with those which are most recently processed. 

View Thumbnail Images to Save Time

The “View Landsat Thumbnails after Querying” tutorial explains how to use the STAC to access and view the thumbnails and other equivalent images before retrieving the full scene data.

STAC metadata includes a reduced-resolution browse image along with additional images for each Landsat scene. This allows users to view the images before deciding which Landsat scenes will work in their research. 

Access U.S. ARD Data More Efficiently

The “Pulling Windows of Landsat Analysis Ready Data” tutorial demonstrates how to pull windows of Landsat U.S. ARD for faster and more efficient data processing.

Landsat U.S. ARD products reduce the burden of processing Landsat data for scientific research, particularly for time-series analysis. Pre-processing steps like additional radiometric and/or geometric corrections and geographic subsetting are not required as U.S. ARD are processed to the highest scientific standard of processing required for direct use in remote sensing applications.

Also available: A new tutorial that provides the follow-on process of “Pulling and Merging Adjacent Windows of U.S. ARD”.  

Use Effective Parameters to Find Metadata for Multiple Landsat Scenes

The “Everything Scene-Search with Machine-to-Machine” tutorial discusses the required input parameters to interact with the M2M API scene-search endpoint to retrieve metadata for all Landsat scenes that match specific search parameters. 
 

Learn about Newly-Released Tutorials Right Away

To learn about new tutorials, visit the USGS EROS User Group webpage to sign up, or follow the USGSLandsat or USGSEROS social media channels. 

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