How Landsat Helps Idaho: Water, Wildfire and Wildlife

Idaho may be known for potatoes, but its wealth also lies in its scenery and natural resources — mountains, rivers and waterfalls, forests, volcanic rock and hot springs. A growing population gives the state even more reason to use the best information available to serve residents while managing its environment wisely.

Idaho saw the value of Landsat early. In 1975, the Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) began using data from Landsat 1, and it has used every Landsat satellite since.

Managing water for farms

In 2000, the IDWR and the University of Idaho began using Landsat to map evapotranspiration (ET) — water moving into the air through evaporation and plant transpiration.

• Mapping ET field by field helps the IDWR predict irrigation needs for coming seasons and look at longer-term supply and demand.
• In 2009, the state won an Innovations in American Government Award for its use of Landsat ET data.
• The program's success helped shape Landsat 8, which carries a thermal infrared sensor critical to ET modeling.
• The IDWR also uses Landsat for hydrologic modeling, land cover classification, water right compliance, buy-backs and curtailments, and related legal determinations.

Rangeland wildfires

A major factor in fires on Idaho's sagebrush rangeland is cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), an invasive grass that spreads fast, greens up and dies quickly, leaving a carpet of kindling; with a changing climate, fires are growing more frequent and larger. Researchers have used Landsat to map rangeland for the Bureau of Land Management in Idaho, show where cheatgrass has taken hold, find greening areas that could later become fuel, and indicate where it is likely to spread next — information that helps state and federal officials plan prescribed burns and ecosystem recovery.

A 2018 map of cheatgrass cover around Boise, laid over a Landsat 8 image of the same area. Image: U.S. Geological Survey.

Wildlife habitat

Idaho's varied landscape supports equally varied wildlife. Studies show Landsat can help monitor changing habitat for animals such as the sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), informing state and federal decisions. Landsat data were also used to build habitat suitability maps that help the Idaho Department of Fish and Game decide where to survey for the threatened, rarely seen western yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus).

The western yellow-billed cuckoo. Photo: Peter Pearsall, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Landsat for the nation

• The USGS National Land Imaging Program supplies satellite and other remotely sensed data to government, commercial, academic and public users; Landsat data are available worldwide through the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center.
• Landsat is the most widely used land remote sensing source among federal civilian agencies, and local, state and Tribal agencies use it too — for decisions that protect life and property and the environment, and that advance science and the economy.
• Businesses build customer applications on it, and commercial imaging firms use it to refine their products.
• A 2017 USGS study put Landsat's annual economic benefit in the United States at $2.06 billion, far more than it costs to build and run.
• Landsat 8 and 9 image Earth's land every 8 days. NASA and the USGS were reviewing an architecture study to shape Landsat Next, extending a 50-year record — the world's longest of Earth's land surface.
• Consistent data and a no-cost policy let users study long-term change over large areas, and new cloud computing tools put Landsat into decision-support tools every day, much like global positioning systems and weather data.

Sources

Based on "Idaho and Landsat," U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2022–3013, U.S. Geological Survey; a work of the United States government in the public domain.