An API for Spaceborne Sub-Meter Resolution Products for Earth Science

Commercial very high-resolution (VHR) Earth observing (EO) satellites have grown into constellations with global repeat coverage that can support existing NASA EO missions with stereo and multispectral capabilities. Sub-meter data from these instruments exceeds petabytes per year and the cost for data, storage systems and compute power have all dropped exponentially. Concurrently, through agreements with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center is acquiring VHR EO imagery from DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-1, 2, 3 Quickbird-2, GeoEye-1 and IKONOS-2 satellites. To enhance the utility of these data we are developing an Application Program Interface (API) to produce on-demand user defined science ready products to support NASA’s EO missions. These enhancements include two primary foci: 1) surface reflectance 1/2° ortho mosaics - multi-temporal 2 m multispectral imagery that can be used to investigate biodiversity, horizontal forest structure, surface water fraction, and land-cover land-use at the human scale; and 2) VHR digital elevation models (DEMs) - derived with the NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline. These enhanced products benefit Earth surface studies on the cryosphere (glacier mass balance, flow rates and snow depth), hydrology (lake/waterbody levels, landslides, subsidence) and the biosphere (vertical forest structure, tree canopy height and cover) among others. Here we present current API capabilities and recent examples of derived products used in NASA Earth Science projects.