Earth ID: 11315

Landsat and Agriculture

Released on July 22, 2013

The Landsat program has been running since 1972, having successfully launched 7 satellites into orbit. (Landsat 6, owned by a private company, failed at launch and never reached orbit.) Since 1972, Landsat satellites have been regularly collecting data about the Earth's land surface to help monitor our natural resources and study how land cover and land use are changing.

While the amount of land used for agriculture has only grown a small amount since 1972 (6%), the total amount of grain we are producing has more than doubled. The value of the agriculture industry has increased by 40% in that time, to $198 billion per year.

Landsat is an impartial tool for managing water resources. They can detect the amount of water that an individual farm field is using, thereby helping to conserve water use and adjudicate water rights.

Credits

Matthew R. Radcliff (USRA): Producer
James R. Irons (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Bruce Cook (NASA/GSFC): Scientist

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11315

This item is part of this series:
Landsat

Keywords:
DLESE >> Agricultural science
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Agriculture
SVS >> Hyperwall
NASA Science >> Earth

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0