Indiana is mostly farms and forest — more than 80 percent of its land — and Landsat satellites have been photographing all of it every few days for fifty years. The free imagery tells farmers and agencies what is planted where, how far a flood spread, and how land changes over decades.
A farming state
Agriculture adds more than $30 billion a year to Indiana's economy; in 2017 the state ranked eighth in farm exports, at $4.6 billion. It is a top-five producer of corn and soybeans, and grows popcorn, spearmint, peppermint, pumpkins, tomatoes and watermelon besides, with hogs, cattle, dairy and poultry. Manufacturing, medicine, energy and mining — coal, building stone, gypsum, sand, gravel and shale — fill out the economy. The Ohio River forms the southern border; in the northwest, the Lake Michigan shore and Indiana Dunes sit beside the Chicago metropolitan area.
Crops from orbit
The 2021 Cropland Data Layer for Indiana and its neighbours: forest, grassland, corn and soybeans. U.S. Department of Agriculture.
- The Cropland Data Layer. Built on Landsat and other data, the Department of Agriculture's yearly map shows what crop is in every field, how much, and where land use has changed.
- Tillage and cover crops. A private project used Landsat images from 2006 to 2015 to map tillage practices and cover crops across the state, information about soil health useful to both industry and land managers.
The 2008 flood
In June 2008, 7 to 10 inches of rain fell on southern Indiana. Rivers peaked on June 10 and 11; the flood touched thousands of people, killed four, and damaged buildings and crops. Purdue University researchers compared a Landsat 5 image from June 11 with one from the year before, mapped how far the water had spread, and had results out to users within a week.
Southern Indiana on June 9, 2007 (left), and during the flood on June 11, 2008 (right). USGS.
Slow change
- From proving ground to refuge. Images from 1985 to 2013 tracked how the 50,000-acre Jefferson Proving Ground, an Army munitions test range, changed as it became Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge — forest giving way to shrubland in places — now a haven for rare birds and a hunting ground for turkey and deer.
- Indiana Dunes. An analysis of 2007–2012 imagery measured the disturbances around and within the national park, from development outside it to wetland and forest restoration inside.
Restored wetland in Indiana Dunes National Park. National Park Service.
Landsat in brief
Landsat 8 and 9 together cover the land every 8 days, extending a record begun in 1972 — the longest continuous record of Earth's land surface. The data are free through the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, and a 2017 USGS study valued them at $2.06 billion a year to the United States. Landsat Next, designed by NASA and the USGS, will continue the series.
Sources
Written from Indiana and Landsat, U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet, a work of the United States government in the public domain.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from pubs.usgs.gov
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