USGS Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) for the conterminous United States are now available for download from EarthExplorer (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov).
ARD for Alaska and Hawaii will become available at a later date. Eventually, Landsat 1-5 Multispectral Sensor (MSS) data will also be included in the ARD product suite once these data have been processed into the Landsat Collection 1 inventory structure. Global Landsat ARD specifications are also being developed and will be announced when finalized.
Landsat ARD is a revolutionary new product that will make the Landsat archive more accessible, easier to analyze, and will reduce the amount of time users spend on data processing for time-series analysis. Landsat ARD are derived from Landsat Collection 1 Level-1 precision and terrain-corrected scenes, which are then processed and arranged in geospatially calibrated tiles and dense temporal stacks for immediate use in monitoring and assessing landscape change.
Each Landsat ARD tile consists of the following four data layers:
· Top of atmosphere (TA) reflectance
· Brightness temperature (BT)
· Surface reflectance (SR)
· Pixel quality assessment (QA)
Landsat ARD products are processed to a common tiling scheme. Each tile contains 5,000 x 5,000 30-meter pixels, and includes all the pixels acquired in a given day within its extents.
Landsat ARD documentation and other useful resources are located on the Landsat ARD webpage: https://landsat.usgs.gov/ard.
