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Background

The Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG)-2018 Assessment found that knowing where the land surface vegetation and urban areas are changing would help satisfy the satellite needs of all the United States (U.S.) land monitoring SNWG agencies. The near-global Surface Disturbance (DIST) data product uses imagery from 7 optical and radar satellites (Harmonized Landsat-8/9 and Sentinel-2 A/B, Sentinel-1 A/B/C) to identify where and when the land surface has undergone disturbance such as vegetation loss from processes such as fires, landslides, drought, urban growth, deforestation, and mining, at 30 m resolution every few days. An annual DIST product will be available after a full year of disturbance granules have been generated. This SNWG activity is being managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) project, who will oversee the development, implementations, and operations. The optical DIST product was developed in partnership with the University of Maryland Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) group. Further information about OPERA and the DIST product suite can be found below. 

Status

In production since February 2023. Products are available from NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) (doi:10.5067/SNWG/OPERA_L3_DIST-ALERT-HLS_PROVISIONAL_V0.000)

Solution Characteristics

PlatformsTemporal FrequencyHorizontal ResolutionGeographic DomainLatencySpectral BandThematic Areas
Landsat 8, Landsat 9, Sentinel-2 A, Sentinel-2 B, Sentinel-1 A, Sentinel-1 CSub-weekly30 mNear-global (all land masses excluding Antarctica)~ 3 daysVisible (VIS), Near Infrared (NIR), Short-wave Infrared (SWIR), Microwave (MW), Long-band (L-Band), Short-band (S-Band), Compromise-band (C-Band)Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems, Disaster Response, Earth Surface and Interior, Infrastructure Products/Other, Land Cover and Land Use Change, Ocean and Cryosphere, Water and Energy Cycle

Societal Impact

This solution provides maps of vegetation loss every few days that can be used to track wildfires and invasive species, monitor forest health and deforestation, and detect land cover change. Such maps are crucial in land management, forest and resource monitoring, and hazard response and recovery.​

Solution Resources

Need help using this solution? For more information about the DIST product, visit the following resources:

 

Workshops and Open Meetings

Title and Registration LinkDescriptionDate
Fourth OPERA Stakeholder Engagement WorkshopThe fourth OPERA workshop provides updates of OPERA data products in production, preliminary validation of data products that are near-production, and an overview of upcoming 2025 products. End users will have an opportunity to present their use (or planned use) of OPERA products.July 19, 2024
The Beginning of a New Era of Multidisciplinary NASA Satellite Data Products Enabled by the Satellite Needs Working GroupThe Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) is a U.S. Government inter-agency organizational body that was established in 2016 to identify the Earth observational gaps and data needs across the U.S. Federal Civilian Agencies. The SNWG effort is a 2-year process in which NASA identifies and ultimately implements a wide range of innovative solutions that benefit the entire Earth Science community. There are currently 19 different SNWG activities underway, with many of the products now operational. In this session, we will invite representatives from the implementation teams behind several of the highly successful SNWG products to describe the new capabilities and where to access the data. This includes the Harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2 (HLS), which is a cloud optimized dataset that standardizes common data bands from the two satellite constellations thereby effectively doubling the data available to the community. Another SNWG activity is the generation of a global surface water extent product that combines the data frequency of the optical satellites and the cloud-penetrating capabilities of satellite radar for a uniformed and frequent surface water product. Other activities include new radiation and clouds products, global air quality, land surface disturbance, North America deformation, vegetation indices suite with HLS, and planetary boundary layer products.December 13, 2023
Third OPERA workshop: Introducing the OPERA Radiometric Terrain Corrected (RTC) Radar Backscatter and Coregistrated Single Look Complex (CSLC) ProductsIn this workshop, the OPERA team provided an update on the Dynamic Surface Water Extent and Surface Disturbance products. They also introduced provisional RTC and CSLC products. June 27, 2023
Second OPERA Workshop: Introducing OPERA Interim Products and Updates on Surface Water Extent and Disturbance ProductsIn this workshop, OPERA presented preliminary validation results for the surface water (DSWx) and surface disturbance (DIST) products while also providing information on how to access them.September 2, 2022
First OPERA Workshop: SNWG-2018 Surface Water Extent and Surface Disturbance ProductDuring this workshop, OPERA introduced the near-global surface water (DSWx) and surface disturbance (DIST) products to gather feedback from the user community.February 4, 2022