U.S. Landsat Analysis Ready Data

U.S. Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) has revolutionized how Landsat data are processed. U.S. Landsat 

ARD significantly reduces the burden of preprocessing of 

Landsat data, allowing users to easily produce Landsatbased maps of land cover and land-cover change and other 

derived geophysical and biophysical products.

U.S. Landsat ARD contains Level-2 products derived 

from Landsat Collections Level-1 scenes. ARD is provided 

as tiled, georegistered, top of atmosphere, and atmospherically corrected products defined in a common equal area 

projection for immediate use in monitoring and assessing 

landscape change. 

U.S. Landsat ARD is available for the conterminous 

United States, Alaska, and Hawaii, using the following 

Landsat Collections Level-1 products:

• Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI)/Thermal

Infrared Sensor (TIRS) Tier 1, Tier 2

• Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+)

Tier 1

• Landsat 4–5 Thematic Mapper (TM) Tier 1

Products

U.S. Landsat ARD consists of the following products 

and spatially explicit quality assessment information to 

document the presence of sensor, solar, atmospheric and 

topographic conditions and traceability to the Landsat 

Level-1 input source scenes used in ARD:

• Top of Atmosphere (TA) reflectance (reflectance calculated “at sensor,” not atmospherically corrected)

• Top of Atmosphere Brightness Temperature (BT) (radiance calculated “at sensor,” not atmospherically corrected, expressed in Kelvin)

• Surface Reflectance (SR) (atmospherically corrected)

• Surface Temperature (ST) (temperature of the Earth’s

surface, expressed in Kelvin)

• Pixel Quality Assessment (QA) (common and sensorspecific quality bands included)

U.S. Landsat ARD products are generated in the 

Albers Equal-Area (AEA) Conic map projection, 

processed directly from Landsat Level-1 AEA scenes 

through the Landsat Level-2 product generation system 

using the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84) datum.

Figure 1. U.S. Landsat Analysis Ready Data sample stack of one 

tile. Background imagery courtesy of GoogleEarth.

Tile Grid System

U.S. Landsat ARD products are processed into 

spatially consistent tiles of data, modified from the Web 

Enabled Landsat Data (WELD) grid system. The WELDdefined grid is similar to the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), except that WELD is based on the WGS 84 

datum and NLCD uses the North American Datum of 1983 

(NAD 83). The difference in datum causes an approximate 

0.5-pixel offset in the x and y directions between the two 

grids. The U.S. Landsat ARD projection parameters are 

listed in table 1.

Projection: Albers Equal-Area Conic

Datum: World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84)

Output format: Georeferenced Tagged Image File Format 

(GeoTIFF)

Table 1. U.S. Landsat Analysis Ready Data projection 

parameters.

[°, degree]

Projection parameter Conterminous 

United States Alaska Hawaii

First standard parallel 29.5° 55.0° 8.0°

Second standard parallel 45.5° 65.0° 18.0°

Longitude of central meridian −96.0° −154.0° −157.0°

Latitude of projection origin 23.0° 50.0° 3.0°

False easting (meters) 0.0 0.0 0.0

False northing (meters) 0.0 0.0 0.0

U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey

Fact Sheet 2018–3053

August 2018
Each tile contains 5,000×5,000 30-meter 

Landsat pixels that are acquired on a given day. 

The U.S. Landsat ARD tile pixel size is smaller 

than a traditional Landsat scene (Landsat 8 is 

about 6,300×6,000 pixels; Landsat 7 is about 

6,166×5,666 pixels; fig. 2). This tiling scheme 

ensures that each pixel in a U.S. Landsat ARD 

tile represents the same location on the Earth’s 

surface through the entire U.S. Landsat ARD 

time series record from 1982 to the present.

• 422 tiles cover the land mass extent of the

conterminous United States,

• 110 tiles cover the land mass extent of

Alaska, and

• 8 tiles cover the islands of Hawaii.

Figure 2. U.S. Landsat Analysis Ready Data 

tile h05v02 overlaid on Landsat 8 Worldwide Reference 

System 2 (WRS-2) path 44 row 27 for illustrative purposes. 

(Landsat ARD product identifier: LC08_CU_005002_20130603_20170713_C01_V01, 

Landsat product identifier: LC08_L1TP_044027_20130603_20170310_01_T1).

Product Packaging, Filenames, and 

Accessibility

U.S. Landsat ARD provides users with notable 

flexibility in how they access customized Landsat 

data. For example, users have the ability to tailor 

data queries according to application needs in 

terms of geospatial regions, spectral bands and 

collection dates. 

U.S. Landsat ARD products are packaged into 

bundles and delivered as .tar files. The sizes of the 

U.S. Landsat ARD bundles vary greatly and have 

the potential of being substantially larger than the 

traditional Landsat Level-1 scene-based products. 

U.S. Landsat ARD products are available 

for download at no charge from EarthExplorer at 

https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/.

For More Information

For additional information or to learn more about U.S. 

Landsat ARD, please visit the U.S. Landsat ARD web page at 

https://landsat.usgs.gov/ard.

Questions about Landsat operations, data products, and data 

access can be directed to

Landsat User Services

U.S. Geological Survey

Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

47914 252d Street

Sioux Falls, SD 57198

Phone: 605–594–6151 or 1–800–252–4547

Email: custserv@usgs.gov

Twitter: @USGSLandsat

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NASA.Landsat

Visit https://www.usgs.gov for more information about the 

USGS and https://www.usgs.gov/land-resources/nationalland-imaging-program for specifics about the National Land 

Imaging Program.

ISSN 2327-6916 (print)

ISSN 2327-6932 (online)

https://doi.org/10.3133/fs20183053