Landsat-8 L1
About Landsat 8 Level 1 Data
Mission Information
Landsat 8 is the most recently launched Landsat satellite (provided by NASA/USGS) and carries the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) instruments, with 9 optical and 2 thermal bands. These two sensors provide seasonal coverage of the global landmass. We offer access to both Level 1 data from Landsat Collection 1 and 2. The former will be deprecated in the future. Learn more about Level-1 from Landsat Collection 1 here and for Collection 2 here.
Basic Facts
| Property | Info |
|---|---|
| Spatial resolution | 15 m for the panchromatic band and 30 m for the rest (the thermal bands is re-sampled from 100 m) |
| Sensor | Operational Land Imager (OLI) with 9 spectral bands and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) with 2 spectral bands |
| Revisit time | 16 days |
| Spatial coverage | Whole globe |
| Data availability | Since February 2013 |
| Common usage/purpose | Vegetation monitoring, land use, land cover maps and monitoring of changes. |
Accessing Data
To access data you need to send a POST request to our process API. The requested data will be returned as the response to your request. Each POST request can be tailored to get you exactly the data you require. To do this requires setting various parameters which depend on the collection you are querying. This chapter will help you understand the parameters for Landsat 8 Level 1 data. For an overview of all API parameters see the API Reference.
Endpoint Locations
| Service | Notes |
|---|---|
| services-uswest2.sentinel-hub.com/api | Global coverage since February 2013 |
Data type identifier
Level 1 from Landsat Collections 1 and 2 can be accessed using the identifiers L8L1C and LOTL1 [1], respectively, as the value of the input.data.type parameter in your API requests. This is mandatory and will ensure you get the correct data.
Collection 2 (LOTL1) is currently in the preview stage and might thus change.
[1]:LOTL1 is an acronym for Landsat OLI-TIRS Level 1.
Filtering Options
This chapter will explain the input.data.dataFilter object of the process API.
mosaickingOrder
Sets the order of overlapping tiles from which the output result is mosaicked. Note that tiles will in most cases come from the same orbit/acquisition. The tiling is done by ESA for easier distribution.
| Value | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| mostRecent | selected by default. The pixel will be selected from the tile, which was acquired most recently | in case there are more tiles available with the same timestamp (some tiles are processed by many ground stations, some are reprocessed, etc.), the one, which was downloaded from SciHub later will be used. |
| leastRecent | similar to mostRecent but in reverse order | |
| leastCC | pixel is selected from tile with the least cloud coverage meta-data | note that "per tile" information is used here, each covering about a 12,000 sq. km area, so this information is only an estimate . |
maxCloudCoverage
Sets the upper limit for cloud coverage in percent based on the precomputed cloud coverage estimate for each Sentinel-1 tile as present in the tile metadata. Satellite data will therefore not be retrieved for tiles with a higher cloud coverage estimate. For example, by setting the value to 20, only tiles with at most 20% cloud coverage will be used. Note that this parameter is set per tile and might not be directly applicable to the chosen area of interest.
Processing Options
This chapter will explain the input.data.processing object of the process API.
| Action | Description | Values | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| upsampling | The same as for S2L1C. | ||
| downsampling | The same as for S2L1C. |
Available Bands and Data
Information in this chapter is useful when defining input object in evalscript.
Any string listed in the column Name can be an element of the input.bands array in your evalscript.
| Name | Description | Resolution | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| B01 | Ultra Blue (443 nm) | 30m | |
| B02 | Blue (482 nm) | 30m | |
| B03 | Green (561.5 nm) | 30m | |
| B04 | Red (654.5 nm) | 30m | |
| B05 | Near Infrared (NIR) (865 nm) | 30m | |
| B06 | Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) 1 (1608.5 nm) | 30m | |
| B07 | Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) 2 (2200.5 nm) | 30m | |
| B08 | Panchromatic ( 589.5 nm) | 15m | |
| B09 | Cirrus (1373.5 nm) | 30m | |
| B10 | Thermal Infrared (TIRS) 1(10895 nm) | 30m [1] | |
| B11 | Thermal Infrared (TIRS) 2 (12005 nm) | 30m [1] | |
| BQA | Quality Assessment band (QA) | 30m | |
| QA_RADSAT | Radiometric Saturation and Terrain Occlusion QA Band | 30m | Only in LOTL1 |
| VAA | View (sensor) Azimuth Angle | 30m | Only in LOTL1 |
| VZA | View (sensor) Zenith Angle | 30m | Only in LOTL1 |
| SAA | Sun Azimuth Angle | 30m | Only in LOTL1 |
| SZA | Sun Zenith Angle | 30m | Only in LOTL1 |
| dataMask | The mask of data/no data pixels (more). | N/A [2] |
[1]: TIRS bands are acquired at 100 meter resolution, but are resampled to 30 meter in delivered data product (source).
[2]: dataMask has no source resolution as it is calculated for each output pixel.
Units
The data values for each band in your custom script are presented in the default units as specified here. In case more than one unit is available for a given band, you may optionally set the value of input.units in your evalscript setup function to one of the options. Doing so will present data in that unit. The Source Format specifies how and with what precision the digital numbers from which the unit is derived are encoded. The Typical Range indicates what values are common for a given band and unit, however outliers can be expected.
| Bands | Unit | Source Format | Typical Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Optical bands B01 - B09 | REFLECTANCE [1] | UINT16 | 0 - 0.4 | Higher values in infrared bands. Reflectance values can easily be above 1. |
| Thermal band B10 | KELVIN [2] | UINT16 | 250 - 320 | Brightness temperature of roughly -20 to +50 C. Can reach outside this range in extreme environments. |
| BQA | N/A | UINT16 | bit-packed combination (info here) | For Collection 1, the values can be obtained using the utility function named decodeLs8Qa (see). For Collection 2, use the function named decodeL8C2Qa in the similar way (see). |
| QA_RADSAT | N/A | UINT16 | bit-packed combination (info here | |
| Angle bands | Degrees | FLOAT32 | ||
| dataMask | N/A | Boolean | 0 - no data 1 - data |
[1]: Top of the Atmosphere Reflectance.
[2]: Top of the Atmosphere Brightness Temperature.
Catalog API Capabilities
To access Landsat 8 product metadata you need to send search request to our Catalog API. The requested metadata will be returned as JSON formatted response to your request. Currently, only Collection 1 is available in the API.
Endpoint Locations
| Service | Notes |
|---|---|
| services-uswest2.sentinel-hub.com/api/v1/catalog/collections/landsat-8-l1c | Global coverage since February 2013 |
Collection identifier: landsat-8-l1c
Query extension
eo:cloud_covercloud cover percentage
Distinct extension
date