How Landsat Helps Colorado Manage Water, Forests and Energy Land

From the U.S. Geological Survey's fact sheet on Colorado and Landsat. Plans described for future Landsat missions reflect the time it was written.

Irrigating a wheat field in Yuma County, Colorado. Photo: Gene Alexander, U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Water and agriculture

Water is a major issue in Colorado. Melting mountain snowpack keeps rivers flowing, but low precipitation is typical of the Colorado Plateau in the far west and of the Piedmont and plains in the east. Irrigation uses the vast majority of the state's fresh water, growing corn, wheat, hay, sorghum and fruit trees, among other crops.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board has used Landsat to:

• tell irrigated from non-irrigated land;
• estimate how much water irrigated crops consume;
• identify crop types during the growing season;
• find vegetation that uses large amounts of water.

Such data support public and private water planning and more effective, precise water use.

Forests

Colorado has 24 million acres of forest, deciduous and coniferous, across varied landscapes. Checking the health of so much forest, much of it in rugged mountains, is hard from the ground, but satellite images show the effects of fire, insect outbreaks and climate change on wildlife habitat, carbon storage and more. A study by researchers from seven universities and The Nature Conservancy used Landsat imagery from 1997 to 2019 to map where several bark beetle species killed trees in the southern Rocky Mountains, and how severely. Knowing past patterns helps Coloradans anticipate future disturbances.

Regrowth on energy sites

Landsat also reveals vegetation patterns that matter for managing invasive species and wildfire fuels. A USGS study used Landsat imagery from 1984 to 2011 to see how plants returned to several hundred oil and gas pads on the Colorado Plateau after they were developed, capped, reclaimed and abandoned. Because the sites differ in climate and soil, understanding their recovery can guide energy development and land management, including where unwanted invasive species are likely to thrive.

Density of oil and gas well pads in the Colorado Plateau ecoregion, covering parts of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, as counted in 2016. About 100,000 abandoned and active wells span 60 years of activity there. Map: U.S. Geological Survey.

Landsat for the nation

• Access. The USGS National Land Imaging Program supplies satellite imagery and other remotely sensed data to government, business, universities and the public, and provides worldwide access to Landsat data through the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, at no cost.
• Use. Landsat is the most widely used land remote sensing source among federal civilian agencies. Local, state, tribal and federal agencies use it to monitor and forecast changes on the land surface, in inland lakes and along coasts, informing daily decisions that protect life and property and the environment, support science and education and climate resilience, and grow the economy. Businesses use it to improve logistics, resource allocation and investment, and commercial imaging firms use it to refine their own products.
• Value. A 2017 USGS study put Landsat's total annual economic benefit to the United States at $2.06 billion, far more than it costs to build and run.
• Coverage. Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 together image Earth's land surface every 8 days. Landsat 9 and its successors are meant to extend the 50-year Landsat record, the world's longest time series of Earth's land surface. When the fact sheet was written, NASA and the USGS were reviewing the findings of a joint Architecture Study Team to shape Landsat Next, the mission to follow Landsat 9.

Sources

• U.S. Geological Survey, "Colorado and Landsat," Fact Sheet. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/fs20223004/full
• The fact sheet cites Serbina and Miller (2014) on water use, Rodman and others (2021) on bark beetles, Waller and others (2018) on well pad revegetation, and Straub and others (2019) on Landsat's economic value.