Watching the Waters
Landsat helps monitor water quality in lakes, rivers, and coastal areas—places we swim, fish, and get drinking water.
What Landsat Sees
It wasn’t until 2013 with the launch of Landsat 8 that scientists got a clearer view of Earth’s shallow bodies of water that are often muddy and colored by microscopic plants.
If you have ever looked out an airplane window, you may have noticed the ground looks hazy, even on a clear day. That is because the water vapor, pollution, and other particles in the atmosphere scatter and absorb the light. This also happens to the light sensed by Landsat.
These Landsat images show plumes of sediment in San Pablo Bay at the north end of San Francisco Bay looking more hazy with less contrast in the coastal band (left) than the blue band (right). The new coastal band on Landsat 8 and 9 senses wavelengths shorter and closer to the size of airborne particles than the wavelengths of the blue band.
Scientists can compare this coastal band, which is more sensitive to the particles that scatter light in the atmosphere, with the blue band to get a clearer view of the water’s surface without the hazy influence of the atmosphere.
Landsat now helps scientists map underwater features such as coral reefs, kelp and the bottom of shallow waters. It can also help measure sediments that cloud water and chlorophyll of tiny microscopic plants that sometimes create harmful algal blooms.
Changes From Landsat
Landsat observed dramatic changes when construction of a dam changed the flow of a major tributary to the Amazon River in Northern Brazil.
The Landsat image on the left shows the Xingu river in May 26, 2000 before Belo Monte Dam complex of dams, dikes, canals, and power stations transformed the landscape.
Construction started in 2011 and the Pimental Dam was finished in early 2016 blocking the river’s flow forming a large reservoir (seen on far left). By April 2016, water turbines started supplying electricity to the grid. At full capacity, it is the fourth-largest hydroelectric plant in the world.
While this complex supports the energy and economic growth in Brazil, it has impacted native wildlife and indigenous tribes living along the river's bend. The changes to the landscape and newly dry areas (which appear tan and orange) are visible in the July 20, 2017 image (right).
How Change Impacts Us
Fresh drinking is essential to life on Earth and Landsat has been observing changes in our freshwater resources around the globe.
In northern Mexico, the water levels in the Cerro Prieto reservoir have been declining for years and is now less than one percent of its capacity when it was built in 1980. In July 2022, temperatures reached 104º F and caused the water levels to drop so low that they could no longer pull water from the reservoir.
The livelihoods of people living in northern Mexico have been impacted by a two-year drought and the reservoir’s depletion has hampered industry, agriculture, and tourism.
People of Landsat: Kate Fickas
Kate is a remote sensing ecologist who uses Landsat to explore wetland and aquatic ecosystem dynamics over time, studying how they may vary in a changing climate.
The power of Landsat is that you can travel through time and you can travel through space and tell these really rich stories to help the greater good.
2014
Received a Master of Science (M.S.) in Ecology and Remote Sensing from Oregon State University
2016
Publication: Landsat-based monitoring of annual wetland change in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, USA from 1972 to 2012 examining the use of the entire Landsat archive to monitor the effects of Clean Water Act policy implementation on wetlands in Oregon. Landsat 1 was launched only months before the U.S. Clean Water Act went into effect in 1972.
2018
Founded the Ladies of Landsat Twitter group.
2018
Received a Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Ecology and Remote Sensing from Oregon State University
2019
Received a Postdoctoral Scholarship from University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the EPA - Remote Sensing of Coastal Wetlands
2020
Gave speech at the UN Environment Programme on the power of DEIA in the field of Earth observation
2021
Awarded USGS Mendenhall Fellowship with U.S. Geological Survey EROS
2022
Named Geospatial World's 50 Rising Stars list
Postcards from Camp Landsat
This week we travel to the Crimean Peninsula. Here, various microalgae flourish in the shallow, salty lagoons between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. This natural color image portrays the unnaturally strange colors of the area known as Sivash, which is nicknamed the "putrid sea" because the algae in some of the lagoons produce a rotten smell.
Collect all five postcards from Camp Landsat continuing with Week 4: Water & Wellness !
The adventure continues at Camp Landsat with lots of fun and fascinating Landsat facts and activities.
