USGS Landsat, Sioux Falls, SD (2026)

10/21/2026

Precision matters, even in 47-year-old data. 🛰️

Several Landsat 2 and Landsat 3 Multispectral Sensor (MSS) products were recently reprocessed to correct brightness value errors first identified in early 2025. About 44,000 of these products were originally processed with incorrect gain and offset values, specifically in Band 4 and Band 5, which ended up looking brighter or darker than they should have.

This reprocessing also fixed about 1,700 MSS products that had a second problem. A processing bug caused about 27,000 extra pixels per scene, roughly 22% of each image, to be mistakenly marked as cloud, mostly along cloud edges.

It's a small fix with a big purpose.

Correcting these issues reflects our ongoing commitment to providing high-quality data to the Landsat user community. Keeping decades-old imagery accurate matters just as much as collecting new data. It's what allows Landsat's 50+ year archive to remain a reliable resource for studying long-term change on Earth's surface.

Reprocessed products are ready to download from USGS Landsat Data Access: https://ow.ly/bmKI50ZY73a

📸: This Landsat 3 MSS scene over the Los Angeles, California, area was reprocessed to correct brightness value errors. Smoke from wildfires can be seen rising from the Angeles National Forest in September 1979.
Credit: USGS

10/20/2026

📢 Job Announcement

Join the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) as a Supervisory Facility Operations Specialist and help keep a 24/7 science and data center running strong for the next decade.

This position will oversee all aspects of facility operations at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, from day-to-day functions to long-term planning, ensuring EROS remains mission capable now and in the future.

🌎 Location: Sioux Falls, South Dakota
🗓️ Closing date: November 6, 2026

Some specific duties include:

• Overseeing technical and administrative management of facilities operations, infrastructure, physical security, and environmental/safety compliance

• Managing the full scope of operations to sustain safe, reliable, uninterrupted functionality of a 24/7 science and data center

• Leading preventive and predictive maintenance programs to support long-term asset performance

• Coordinating contractor work, enforcing safety standards, and directing emergency response to infrastructure or environmental incidents

• Leading multi-year planning for capital improvements, energy efficiency, and resilience investments

🔗 Open to the Public: https://www.usajobs.gov/job/889031500

📸Entrance of the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Credit: USGS

10/20/2026

📣Job Announcement

Join the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) as a Computer Scientist and help lead the future of land-change monitoring using AI and machine learning.

This position will lead the development of innovative land characterization and monitoring approaches, applying new techniques across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center.

🌎 Location: Sioux Falls, South Dakota
🗓️ Closing date: October 30, 2026

Some specific duties include:

• Leading the research, development, and application of AI, machine learning, and geospatial analytics to map and monitor land cover, land use, and ecosystem change nationwide

• Transitioning research and technical innovations into operational, national-scale land-change monitoring solutions

• Providing technical and scientific leadership on priority projects at USGS EROS

• Communicating research and results with external partners through publications, conferences, and professional meetings

🔗 Open to the Public: https://www.usajobs.gov/job/889050900

📷1 &2: Annual National Land Cover Database (NLDC) maps of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, image on left is from 1985 and image on right is from 2025. Red represents developed land, brown is cropland, yellow is pasture/hay, and green is forest. Credit: USGS

10/16/2026

The eruption lasted hours. Its effects on rivers and ecosystems are still showing up more than 40 years later. 🌋

When Mount St. Helens erupted, it sent a massive wave of mud, water, and debris downstream, overwhelming the Toutle, Cowlitz, and Columbia Rivers with sediment. Parts of the Columbia Riverbed rose by nearly 30 feet.

The rivers never fully reset. Today, some still carry sediment at rates tens of times higher than before the eruption, creating ongoing challenges for flood protection and fisheries.

The land tells a different story, and it's one that genuinely surprised scientists. Before 1980, experts assumed the blast zone would take generations to recover.

Instead, life came back much faster than predicted. Because the devastation wasn't uniform, pockets of surviving plants and animals became the seeds of entirely new habitats. Today, the diversity of life at Mount St. Helens exceeds what existed before the eruption.

That discovery changed how scientists study recovery after disasters, not just at volcanoes, but after wildfires, floods, and other events worldwide.

In 1982, Congress established the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, protecting 110,000 acres around the volcano as a living laboratory for studying long-term change.

Landsat has been part of that story from the start, capturing land change recovery one pixel at a time for more than 40 years.

Want to learn more? Explore 10 ways the Mount St. Helens eruption changed our world 👉 https://ow.ly/i5eV50ZWs7T

📸1: Mount St. Helens, as viewed from the Castle Lake Overlook
📸2: Landsat 9 image, acquired August 26, 2024, showing Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape. Shades of red and pink highlight vegetation regrowth, while the volcano’s north-facing crater and lakes formed by the eruption remain visible.

Credit: USGS

10/16/2026

What’s new with Landsat this October? 🛰️

This month’s issue starts in north-central Oregon, where Landsat captured the progression and aftermath of summer wildfires.

Also in this issue:

🔹 Learn how Landsat data help support water management worldwide
🔹 Get the latest on reprocessed Landsat 2 and Landsat 3 MSS Level-1 products
🔹 Learn how Amazon SNS topics can keep you updated when new Landsat data and science products are added to the USGS EROS archive
🔹 Continue celebrating America’s 250th anniversary with Landsat views from across the country

🔗 https://ow.ly/2fi550ZWrrH

📸: Landsat 8 image showing active fire fronts and large smoke plumes as the fires spread across the landscape. Credit: USGS

10/15/2026

Why did Mount St. Helens erupt sideways instead of straight up? The answer was building underneath the surface for months. 🌋

Magma was pushing upward inside the volcano, but it had nowhere to go. The north side of the mountain bulged outward by more than 260 feet, proving to be the weakest point of the mountain.

When that bulge finally gave way on May 18, 1980, it didn't just trigger a landslide — it uncorked the volcano. With the lid gone, the pressure trapped inside blasted out sideways instead of straight up, flattening everything in its path before the eruption even turned vertical.

The result was one of the most dramatic landscape transformations ever captured from space.

Landsat satellites have been orbiting Earth since 1972, and the archive holds a before-and-after record of this eruption that's hard to look at without feeling the scale of it. Thick forest, replaced in an instant by ash and debris — visible not just on the ground, but from 438 miles up.

That transformation didn't stop at the mountain, either. Next, we're following the eruption downstream.

Want to see it for yourself? Click here to view the full-time series:
https://ow.ly/IgVF50ZWsL2

📸1. Landsat 1 image, acquired September 15, 1973, showing the area around Mount St. Helens before its eruption on May 18, 1980. Forest appears bright red, with patches of logging visible throughout the area. Snow appears white at the summit.
📸2. Landsat 4 image, acquired May 22, 1983, showing the same area a decade later. Ash from the eruption appears gray across the summit and surrounding landscape, replacing much of the white snow cover seen in the earlier image.

Credit: USGS

10/14/2026

It's Earth Science Week! 🌋 Let's look back at the day Mount St. Helens changed forever.

Before May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens was famous for its near-perfect, symmetrical shape. Its striking profile even earned it the nickname "Fujiyama of America."

But in the weeks before the eruption, the volcano started changing.

More than 10,000 earthquakes shook the area. Steam explosions repeatedly broke through the surface. And the volcano's north side bulged outward by more than 260 feet.

Then, at 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake triggered a massive landslide on the volcano's north flank. The collapse released pressure inside the volcano and unleashed a devastating lateral blast of hot gas, rock, and ash.

Within minutes, an ash column rose about 15 miles into the sky. Ash spread across much of the Western United States, turning day into night in Spokane, Washington, about 250 miles away. In the days that followed, the ash traveled across the country and around the globe.

The eruption didn't just change the landscape around Mount St. Helens.

It changed the mountain itself — and Landsat has been watching ever since.

So, why did Mount St. Helens erupt the way it did? Next, we're going beneath the surface to find out.

📸1: Mount St. Helens before the volcano erupted on May 18, 1980. Spirit Lake is in the foreground.
📸2: Mount St. Helens showing the violence of the eruption in contrast with the quiet countryside, Mount Adams in background. Skamania County, Washington. 1980.
Credit: USGS

10/13/2026

How do you make sure satellite imagery is accurate enough to trust?

Every year, the Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation (JACIE) Workshop brings together remote sensing experts to answer exactly that question.

JACIE 2027 will focus on system capabilities, calibration, and how data quality impacts real-world Earth observation applications. Attendees will come together to present and discuss new systems, new methods of improving data, and new applications made possible by improved data quality. The workshop is open to all interested parties across government, industry, and academia, including students.

📅Workshop Details:
Date: April 5–9, 2027
Location: USGS Headquarters, Reston, Virginia
In-person registration deadline: March 26, 2027

📝 Planning to present or exhibit? Complete the workshop registration form before submitting an abstract or exhibitor form. Abstracts are due Nov. 20, 2026.

➡️ Register here: https://ow.ly/5nX650ZWuoJ

What to expect:
🔸 Presentations on new and existing systems
🔸 Side meetings
🔸 Poster session
🔸 Exhibits

📷: Save the date graphic for the JACIE 2027 Workshop.

Credit: USGS

10/13/2026

A sharper view of our changing planet is coming. 🛰️🌎

Meet LandIS, the Landsat Instrument Suite that will fly aboard Landsat 10, the next satellite in the Landsat series.

With 26 spectral bands spanning visible light to thermal infrared, LandIS will collect more than twice as many bands as Landsat 8 and Landsat 9. These additional bands will help users better distinguish features on Earth’s surface and monitor water quality, agriculture, vegetation health, snow and ice, soil conditions, and other environmental parameters.

LandIS will also capture finer spatial detail, with resolutions of 10 to 20 meters for visible, near-infrared, and shortwave-infrared observations. That means a clearer view of smaller features, including streams, streamside habitats, woodlots, and individual agricultural fields.

Together, more spectral bands and finer spatial resolution will help users detect, distinguish, and track environmental change with greater detail and precision.

Expected to begin operations in the early 2030s, LandIS will also continue Landsat’s coverage of sunlit land and near-shore waters, along with select nighttime observations. It will also uphold the program’s high standards for data accuracy, extending a record of Earth observations that spans more than 54 years.

🔗Learn more about Landsat 10 and its planned capabilities: https://ow.ly/8hzW50ZW4EQ

📷: A visual comparison of spatial resolution showing the 30-meter pixels of Landsat 8 and 9 (left) alongside the finer, more detailed 10-meter pixels planned for Landsat 10 (right). Credit: NASA

10/07/2026

Let’s take the scenic route across Massachusetts! 🛰️

Massachusetts ratified the U.S. Constitution on Feb. 6, 1788, becoming the sixth state. As America marks 250 years, the Bay State comes into view in our America from Space journey.

Though the seventh-smallest state by land area, Massachusetts is home to about 7 million people, more than 1,500 miles of coastline, and forests covering roughly 60 percent of the state. That mix gives Landsat three very different stories to tell.

First stop: Cape Cod. The state’s coastline has long supported fishing, maritime trade, and tourism. Wind, waves, and storms continually reshape the Cape’s beaches and barrier islands. Long-term Landsat imagery helps researchers track shoreline movement, breaches, and other coastal changes—information that can support coastal management.

Next: Boston and Cambridge. Boston has more than 18,000 people per square mile, and urban heat hotspots can increase health risks. Buildings and pavements can have higher land surface temperatures than trees, parks, and water. Landsat’s thermal observations can map those differences and help identify hotspots. Cambridge used Landsat data to help develop an urban heat island model that informed its 2021 Resilient Cambridge Plan.

Farther west, October Mountain State Forest brings Massachusetts’ forests into view. Forests play an important role in storing carbon. As Massachusetts developed its decarbonization plan, Landsat land-cover data helped researchers’ model how forest growth, development, and tree harvesting could affect future carbon storage.

🔗 Continue the scenic route from space. Explore the Massachusetts State Mosaic: https://ow.ly/6Wf450ZT8cx

📸1: A Landsat 9 image of Cape Cod and surrounding coastal waters. Acquired September 12, 2026.
📸2: A Landsat 9 image of Boston, Cambridge, Boston Harbor, and surrounding communities. Acquired August 31, 2025.
📸3: A Landsat 9 image of October Mountain State Forest in western Massachusetts. Sun glint is visible on several ponds across the forested landscape. Acquired June 13, 2026.
Credit: USGS

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