Tuesday, May 3, 2011

ESRI Makes Landsat GLS Archive Available as Image Services

ESRI has gone live with its Landsat Imagery services based upon the USGS/NASA Global Land survey (GLS) .

ESRI is publishing the 1975, 1990, 2000 and 2005 GLS datasets as image services that can be accessed in ArcGIS Dekstop, ArcGIS Online and in REST-based web applications. It has also made these services available in web viewers.

The datasets themselves can be viewed in various band combinations. ESRI has also provided a set of change products (GLSChange) than can be accessed just like the Landsat GLS imagery. The GLS and GLSChange services together provide an impressive data resource.

It is worth noting that the GLS datasets do not contain all available Landsat imagery but are global collections of selected high-quality scenes, more or less centered around the nominal year.