North Carolina and Landsat: Watching Forests, Coasts and Cities From Space

The U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat satellites have imaged Earth's land surface for more than 50 years — the longest continuous record of its kind. A USGS fact sheet shows how that record serves North Carolina.

Watching over forests

More than half of North Carolina is forested. The timber industry contributed nearly $35 billion to the state's economy in 2019 and employed more than 73,600 people, and the forests also draw visitors for recreation. North Carolina leads the nation in acres of wildland-urban interface, where homes and forests mingle and homes are at risk from wildfire. Landsat data can map fire perimeters in near real time, assess damage afterward, and map vegetation and fuel loads for long-term wildfire planning.

False-color Landsat 8 and 9 images show the scar of the Thomas Divide Complex Fire, which started in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in spring 2022. U.S. Geological Survey

Mapping the coast

Millions of people visit North Carolina's sandy beaches every year, and its shorelines and estuaries are critical wildlife habitat. Tracking how the coast changes through erosion, sea-level rise and more frequent hurricanes and tropical storms would be difficult without repeated satellite images. Scientists were already using Landsat to study change around Croatan and Pamlico Sounds in 1978, and as mapping methods, computing power and the archive have grown, researchers can now follow coastline trends across decades.

A breach at Rodanthe, North Carolina, caused by Hurricane Irene in 2011. Repeated storms and rising seas make better models of coastal change important to local planners. Image from the USGS fact sheet.

Urban growth

Nearly a million people moved to North Carolina between 2010 and 2020, most to metropolitan areas — a growth rate of 9.5%, faster than the national 7.3%. Growth brings more runoff, pressure on wetlands and wildlife habitat, and the urban heat island effect, in which pavement and buildings hold heat and make cities hotter than the surrounding countryside. Landsat's thermal sensors make it useful for studying urban heat. Military installations such as Camp Lejeune have also used Landsat to study growth and ecosystem health on military land as development encroaches.

Landsat maps the intensity of development across the nation; this image shows Charlotte. U.S. Geological Survey

Landsat nationally

Through its National Land Imaging Program, USGS provides satellite imagery and other remote sensing data to government, commercial, academic and public users worldwide, distributed through the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. Landsat is the most widely used land remote sensing source in federal civilian agencies, and local, state, tribal and federal agencies rely on it for decisions about land, water and resources. Businesses use it to improve logistics and investment decisions. A 2024 study estimated Landsat's total economic benefit at $25.6 billion a year, far more than it costs to build and run.

Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 together image Earth's land every 8 days, and data are free. NASA and USGS are working toward the launch of Landsat 10 in 2031 to extend the record.

Sources

• U.S. Geological Survey, "North Carolina and Landsat," Fact Sheet 2022–3038: https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/fs20223038/full