ABSTRACT
Acquiring and importing data into digital image analysis packages, such as ERDAS Imagine and others provides an opportunity to extract pertinent information for available raster data sources. Landsat data, now freely available through the US government agency portals, offer the longest running, continuous cover of the Earth’s surface since July 23, 1972. Other government-based satellite data acquisition programs, such as the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument (MSI) and SPOT data products, more recently have also become publicly available at no cost through accessible web-portals. This chapter demonstrates how to use the United States Geological Survey (USGS) EarthExplorer and the USGS Global Visualization Viewer (GloVis) websites to search for and download Sentinel-2 MSI and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI)/ Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) imagery. Additionally, this chapter demonstrates how to import this data as a multi-band composite image for further analysis into other digital image processing packages.
