Elizabeth Forsbacka is an instrument manager. She leads a diverse team to design, build and test Earth or space science instruments. She says "My job is to build a good team that can do it all. Our work from design through delivery of the spacecraft usually takes about four years." See what it's like to work on this sort of project.

Learn how Landsat data are used to detect changes in land use. This video describes how the data are interpreted and gives examples of changes in forests from different insects and differences due to land management.

The purpose of this activity is to have students use an Earth Systems perspective to identify the various causes associated with changes to Earth's forests as they review Landsat imagery of site locations from around the world.

Read about Dr. Valerie L. Thomas and her contributions to the Landsat program. Since her Landsat days, Thomas, who later invented and patented the Illusion Transmitter, has actively supported women in STEM. Today, she is still teaching and participating in hands-on STEM programs.

This activity is modified from the USDA/US Forest Services' lesson found in the Natural Inquirer newsletter.  The purpose of this hands-on activity is to engage students in a similar process for monitoring forests as NASA scientists use to study the Biosphere, whereby they apply what they know of

Students identify kinds of land cover (such as roads, fields, urban areas, and lakes) in Landsat satellite images. They decide which land cover types allow the passage of water into the soil (pervious) and which types do not allow it (impervious).

This USGS activity leads students to an understanding of what remote sensing means and how researchers use it to study changes to the Earth’s surface, such as deforestation. 

Identifying cause and effect relationships can help us make predictions about the function of natural systems and their impact on the world. These relationships, whether simple or complex, are vital for forecasting weather and predicting Earth events in new contexts.

In this activity, students use satellite images from the NASA Landsat team to quantify changes in glacier cover over time from 1986 to 2018. 

Students use scale to determine the area of volcanic deposits following the March 3, 2015 eruption of Chile's Mount Villarrica stratovolcano, one of the country's most active volcanoes.