Bundaberg, Queensland. Landsat 8 image over Open Street Map, displaying the ‘pastures & greens’ image filter (custom parameters) which highlights irrigated areas in bright green and ploughed fields in brown. Image provided by MapXplorer.
MapXplorer’s new web-based un|earth:: app makes 30 years of Australian Landsat data available to the public in a browser-based interface — requiring no synthesis to explore the data.
The Australian Landsat archive is a historic record of landscape change over the last 32 years – change which was shaped by events like droughts, floods, bushfires, cyclones, land erosion but also urban expansion, land clearing, mining, crop growing, grazing and similar human activities.
The Australian Landsat archive is managed by Geoscience Australia and is accessible via the National Computational Infrastructure public website under the Creative Commons Attribution licence.
Of course this means that anyone can download and make use of this data, but the release of un|earth:: means that anyone can now view and analyse the historical archive of Landsat data if they have access to a browser.
MapXplorer says that the ultimate aim of the app is to introduce remote sensing analysis concepts to a wide range of potential users, and proves the viability of delivering low cost, advanced spatial analytics capability to the mass market.
The app’s initial release features limited functionality, supporting just simple image manipulation capabilities, presenting users with a series of filters presenting analytical views of the data, with more features to come in future releases.
