How to use Soar’s FREE satellite imagery feeds (inc. video tutorial)
Tags: Mapping, Mappt, Soar, Satellite Technology, GIS

Soar is gaining lots of popularity as a global super-map of drone imagery, but the platform also gives users access to powerful satellite data feeds for spatial exploration!

Soar is building a dynamic super-map of the world that changes every time new content is added. By positioning itself as the world’s leading resource for all maps and imagery, Soar allows web and mobile users to search up-to-date satellite imagery, high-resolution aerial feeds, and content collected by drone pilots. Have you explored Soar’s dynamic satellite imagery data feeds yet?

WATCH — How to access FREE satellite imagery on the Official Soar YouTube Channel:

In order to assist users with realising the potential of the satellite imagery available to them on Soar, this article will describe how to search, view and download data from our Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 feeds.

We’ll start with a welcome to Soar for our first-time users! Below you can see the landing page where we will begin the dive into Soar’s satellite feeds. Click on the Satellite tab highlighted below and navigate around the base map layer to find an area of interest.

Here you can see an area of the Bahamas I have navigated to on Soar’s base-map layer (Google Maps).

Once you have navigated to your own area of interest on Soar, we can begin the process (TIP: Stuck for ideas? Try a quick Google search for the latest environmental events, or follow our news account FoundOnSoar on Twitter):

Step 1: Click on the button labelled ‘Draw area of interest’ shown on the Satellite tab down the left of the page (see image above).

Step 2: Use the cursor to draw a box over the area (“AOI”) you wish to load satellite imagery. Note: As this type of data results in very large files, there is an upper limit to the size of the AOI box drawn. If you get an error, try boxing a smaller area on the map.

Step 3: Soar will load the available satellite feeds for your chosen area. You can narrow the search for particular dates as well as satellite type by clicking on the headings shown above the feed (see below). There are two state-of-the-art satellites available to select from — Landsat-8 (NASA) and Sentinel-2 (ESA), with a number of satellite band combinations allowing users to visualise different environmental features.

Satellite imagery feed shown on the left for an AOI over The Bahamas. The feed can be narrowed by satellite type and date range at the headings above Search Results.

N OTE: We will be producing a separate blog solely dedicated to explaining the types of Satellite feeds available on Soar, and their uses for various different applications, soon!

Step 4: Once you have selected a satellite image from the feed, two blue buttons will appear to the right side of your selected image. These allow you to download or share the satellite data, respectively. Click on the download button to begin the download process.

Step 5: A pop-up window will appear with a list of metrics regarding the satellite AOI you wish to download (see below). This includes a user-selected option shown in the drop-down for ‘Image Quality’. Select an appropriate option (see below) and click download to save the imagery to your computer.

Download window for satellite imagery including all image metadata and a choice of resolution options.

NOTE: The choice of image quality will depend both on the purpose you intend to use the imagery for, as well as the size of the AOI drawn. Lower quality imagery will have lower resolution, meaning that each pixel covers a larger area of the Earth’s surface. The lowest available option on Soar is 50m²/pixel, while the best available resolution is currently 10m²/pixel. High resolution imagery of 10m²/pixel is well-suited for spatial analysis using GIS software, whilst sharing satellite imagery on social media only requires 20m²/pixel resolution or less. If your selected satellite imagery AOI is too large (>2000km²), it will not be possible to download the image at high resolution.

Now that you have downloaded the satellite data to your computer in GeoTIFF format, you are free to load this into any commercial/open-source GIS software at your disposal. That’s right, up-to-date satellite data for any area in the world at your fingertips, available completely FREE from Soar!

The data can be loaded into programs such as QGIS (Free), ArcGIS or Global Mapper which will enable you to analyse and explore the data in great detail. For example, you can load successive data for the same area, isolating localised changes in various features over time. Or you can use up to date satellite data (even from yesterday) as a base layer in your GIS program for field mapping exercises.

If you are a Mappt user, it is certainly possible to bring satellite data from Soar in and take advantage of Mappt’s powerful offline mapping tools. To do this, we recommend following this blog on how to convert GeoTIFFs to ECW/JP2 imagery suitable for loading into Mappt.