USGS Fact Sheet 2021–3052, September 2021.
The Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is the largest facility of its kind in the USGS — both a science center and a data center for understanding a changing planet.
EROS opened in 1973 as the receiving station, archive and distribution hub for the Landsat satellites. In nearly five decades it has become a world leader in land change science and a flagship data hub for the Department of the Interior.
The archive: by mid-2021 it held 65 petabytes (65 million gigabytes), including:
- Landsat and the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2;
- NASA's Terra and Aqua;
- imagery from aircraft and drones, and aerial photos back to the 1930s;
- lidar, including from GEDI on the International Space Station.
Its scientists use high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning to map land cover and land change, for emergency response, resource management, urban planning, carbon and ecosystem work. Its engineers keep Landsat data accurate and continuous.
The big satellite dish on the EROS Center's front lawn. Photo: USGS.
Satellite and ground systems
EROS is Landsat's ground-systems headquarters, where data are collected, corrected, stored and shared.
- Receiving: its antenna catches raw data as satellites pass over the middle of the conterminous U.S., with 5–6 daytime and 5–6 nighttime downloads a day, 7 days a week. Partner stations add more: Svalbard, Norway; Neustrelitz, Germany; Alice Springs, Australia; and Fairbanks, Alaska.
- Correcting: geometric and radiometric corrections make each image line up with the right spot on Earth and with every Landsat image back to 1972.
- Calibrating: the EROS Calibration/Validation Center of Excellence leads internationally on accuracy, and on matching Landsat with similar satellites.
Each Landsat 8 pass records a strip about 185 kilometers wide. Graphic: USGS.
Science and applications
Landsat's 30-meter pixels underpin several national maps:
| Product | What it gives |
|---|---|
| National Land Cover Database (NLCD) | a land-cover class for every 30-by-30-meter plot in the U.S., plus tree canopy, a change index and impervious surfaces for studying urban growth, heat islands and runoff |
| LCMAP (Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection) | annual maps from 1985 to 2020, with short-term disturbances, their intensity and approximate dates |
| LANDFIRE | 20 layers on historical vegetation, hundreds of vegetation types, height and fuels, for wildfire planning and response; EROS is the partnership's mapping engine |
Other teams estimate evapotranspiration (water lost from soil and plants) to manage water under pressure from climate change; build topobathymetric elevation models of coasts, above and below the water, where sea-level rise and erosion threaten; and feed data to USAID's Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), created after the East African famine of the early 1980s, to guide food aid.
EROS researchers Jeff Danielson and Jeff Irwin at work in Pohnpei, Micronesia. Photo: USGS.
Data center and systems
- Users: more than 415,000 unique users a year.
- Landsat: nearly 9 million scenes — a major source for Google Earth and Google Maps — plus products such as Surface Temperature, Burned Area and Fractional Snow Cover.
- Breadth: more than 1,100 kinds of remotely sensed data. EROS has hosted NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) for more than 30 years.
- Computing: EROS now uses the Amazon Web Services cloud alongside its own systems, and houses "Denali," a Cray supercomputer, the largest in the Department of the Interior.
- Disasters: the Hazards Data Distribution System shares imagery after hurricanes, wildfires, oil spills and tsunamis with first responders. EROS is a member of the International Charter Space and Major Disasters.
The EROS archive holds digital imagery of Earth's surface back to the 1930s. Photo: USGS.
New missions
Landsat satellites last: Landsat 5 holds the world record for the longest-operating Earth observation satellite, 28 years and 10 months. NASA builds each Landsat; after launch and commissioning, the USGS runs it. EROS's New Missions Branch helps design future ones.
- Landsat 9: due to launch in 2021, updated but similar to Landsat 8 (launched 2013), to keep the unbroken record.
- Landsat Next: the following generation, aiming to add new technology as commercial and civilian satellite data multiply.
Landsat missions since 1972. Graphic: USGS.
Visiting
The center is a short drive from Sioux Falls, South Dakota's largest city. About 6,000 people visit in a typical year.
- Tours: daily at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.; walk-ins and group tours for schools, universities, senior centers and others.
- Inside: a scale model of a Landsat satellite, the computer wing where the data live, digital displays, and Landsat collections as they happen.
- Outreach: staff visit classrooms and events with Landsat puzzles and games; see EROS outreach and education.
- Hours: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday, except federal holidays. 47914 252nd St., Sioux Falls, SD 57198; 605–594–6511.
Students point out features on the globe at the EROS Center. Photo: USGS.
Data online: EarthExplorer, LandsatLook, GloVis, and Landsat acquisitions in near real time at EarthNow.
Sources
Based on Earth Resources Observation and Science Center—Keeping Watch Over Earth's Resources, USGS Fact Sheet 2021–3052, U.S. Geological Survey; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The import had every line doubled; the text, photographs and graphics are taken from the fact sheet's PDF. A photograph of the Landsat 9 rocket fairing, uncredited, is not reproduced.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from pubs.usgs.gov
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