GEOG 121 Project 4:
Finding Landsat Data


DAVID BARLEY
This scene was acquired on August 24, 2003. It is a Landsat image of south central Pennsylvania surrounding the Susquehanna River.

WRS stands for the World Reference System. A WRS path is the path of the space vehicle's orbit around the earth, while a WRS row refers to the latitudinal center line across a frame of imagery along any given path. These rows and paths make up a global grid with 248 rows and 233 paths.

Prices for Landsat scenes range from anywhere between $475 and $800.  After the instrument malfunction SLC-off, the EDC reduced the price of Landsat 7 ETM+ scenes from $600 to $275.  When I placed this image into an online shopping cart, the price for me was $250.

My area of interest is my hometown, Elizabethtown, PA. It is centered between the -2 and 2 gridlines and is the small purple area located north of the Susquehanna River. The above scene covers the following area:

NW Corner

41'18'30'N, 77'23'24'W

NE Corner

40'59'02'N, 75'09'05'W

SW Corner

39'41'01'N, 77'52'42'W

SE Corner

39'22'01'N, 75'41'30'W

Center Coordinates

40'20'30'N, 76'31'39'W

A copy of the metadata can be found here.

The browse image is different from the actual Landsat image because it has been recitified and altered to user specifications.  Also, the USGS only provides this single image with no access to the data that produced it, and in order to obtain that data, you must purchase the entire data package from USGS.

Sources
DiBiase, David (2002) Understanding Geographic Data. Module 5: Remotely Sensed Image Data. ESRI Virtual Campus http://campus.esri.com Accessed 28 October 2004.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (2002) Landsat 7 Science Data Users Handbook. http://ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/IAS/handbook/handbook_toc.html Accessed 28 October 2004.
United States Geological Survey (2002) EarthExplorer. http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov Accessed 28 October 2004.