Earthstar Geographics - TerraColor Global Satelite Imagery

TerraColor® Imagery - Upgrades

Throughout the history of TerraColor, we have been progressively upgrading the product to reduce cloud cover and add missing data to fill out a complete global dataset with pole-to-pole coverage. The original NASA Landsat image set is a good base product, but lacks data in the northern and southern polar areas, and also contains cloudy scenes in many areas. By 2009 we had added data for the complete globe, and since that time we have focused on upgrading cloud covered areas and areas with poor image quality. To date, we have upgraded over 2 million square miles of imagery by carefully selecting alternate Landsat 7 scenes from the available public domain archive. For more details, view or download our examples below.

View or print Northern Hemisphere upgrade examples (PDF 4.87MB)
View or print Southern Hemisphere upgrade examples (PDF 2.60MB)
Download Shapefile showing upgraded areas to December 2011 (Zipped 7KB)

In some areas, such as the equatorial tropics, cloud cover is a persistent problem in all satellite imagery. To help overcome this, we combine data from multiple Landsat scenes of the same area to create a single composite scene with the least possible cloud cover. The composite scenes are then mosaicked and seamlessly integrated into the master TerraColor product. We have also begun replacing our simulated true color imagery with real true color imagery (using bands 3, 2 and 1 of Landsat) where it makes sense, such as the Bahamas, southern Carribean Islands, Hawaii and other tropical island areas. So in addition to reducing cloud cover in those areas, the true color imagery shows superior water color and depth information that can be important. For upgrades of island areas, we have also begun using EO-1 Advanced Land Imager (ALI) satellite imagery where available.

TerraColor Africa Upgrade
Original TerraColor equatorial West Africa (left) and upgraded version (right) using multiple composite scenes

TerraColor Africa Upgrade
Original TerraColor Bahamas area (left) and upgraded version (right) using multiple true color composite scenes