ABSTRACT
All land remote sensing data from the US government earth observation missions are available to anyone worldwide on a nondiscriminatory basis. US missions are global in scope and emphasis and follow practices that ensure systematic data acquisition, archiving, and accessibility. This chapter focuses solely on data from two US government earth observation missions commonly used for global land studies: the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat sensors. There are a number of interfaces available for accessing MODIS and Landsat data. The GloVis is an intuitive, graphical-based tool for satellite and other image data products with access to several EROS data collections. Innovative improvements in Landsat data products and delivery systems, such as the Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD) system, will serve as catalysts for improved global use of Landsat. The integrated use of systematically acquired multiresolution, multitemporal, multispectral global data sets, such as MODIS and Landsat, will become a standard scientific practice.
