Global satellite imagery in simulated true colour - "Earth Land Surface 2000"
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All 883 tiles of GeoCover
2000 Landsat ETM+ bands 7/4/2 are first transformed
into
natural color and then re-projected from separate
60 UTM zones into a consistent
geographical latitude/longitude system, in order
to form a global mosaic.
Licensing
fees for the entire
global dataset with 883 mosaic tiles:
- US$ 1,500 for a Company/Agency/University wide license;
- US$ 3,000 for an Integrator/Distributor/Internet license.
Licensing fees
include costs for external hard drives and free
shipping.
False-to-true colour
simulation tool >> Spectral Transformer B742B321
"Earth Land Surface 2000" is based on NASA's orthorectified Landsat ETM+ GeoCover 2000, which consists of a total of 883 mosaic tiles (or 8500+ scenes) covering the entire earth land surface except Antarctica. Each original mosaic in a compressed form contains three pan-sharpened, false-colour bands at a spatial resolution of 14.25 m:
Band 7 (mid-infrared) displayed as red
Band 4 (near-infrared) displayed as green
Band 2 (visible green) displayed as blue
Original mosaics
were successfully converted into natural- or true-colour
composites at a re-sampled resolution of 28.5 m,
after applying GeoSage's spectral analysis techniques
and leveraging between spatial details and the total
file size of images. True-colour outputs still retain
the specifications of GeoCover 2000:
- All image scenes acquired during 1999-2003
- Projection and datum/spheroid: Universal Transverse Mercator and
World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84). Between latitudes 60N-60S,
each mosaic is with the typical size of 6 (longitude) X 5 (latitude)
degrees; north of latitude 60N, each mosaic with the typical size of
12 X 5 degrees. To avoid the gaps between adjacent UTM zones
(a total of 60) when they are re-projected to others (e.g.,
geographical latitude / longitude), each mosaic extends for at least
50 km to the east and west, and 1 km to the north and south (Figure 1).- Cloud cover: 90% of imagery with 10% or less cloud cover
- Absolute positional accuracy: <50 m root-mean-square error
A robust spectral
transformation and colour balancing scheme was
developed and applied across all individual mosaics.
The result is a
consistent and visually-appealing representation
of global land surfaces
circa 2000. This medium-resolution dataset offers
an incredibly low cost
and affordable solution to a wide range of visualisation-related
applications.
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Figure 1: Locations of 883 mosaic tiles used in GeoCover 2000 and "Earth Land Surface 2000". Also see the overview of each of 883 tiles.
1. Samples with a regional view
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 London |
 Paris |
 Oslo |
 Istanbul |
 Cairo, Nile River Delta |
 Lhasa |
 Shanghai |
 HongKong |
 Taiwan |
 Tokyo |
 Sydney |
 Canberra |
 Melbourne |
 Christchurch |
 Auckland |
2. Samples with a full spatial resolution of 28.5 m
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 San Diego |
 Al-Qassasin, Egypt |
 Tokyo Bay |
 Kaohsiung, Taiwan |
 Sydney |
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 Clyde River, South Island,
NZ |
3. "Alive" (with a full spatial resolution of 28.5 m)
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 UTM Zone 16N, Latitudes
80-85 (size 15.5 MB) |
 UTM Zone 40N, Latitudes
20-25 (size 11.7 MB) |
4. Delivery
The total file size of 883 mosaic tiles in GeoTIFF format is ~600 GB. Tiles are stored on external hard drives with FireWire 400 / USB 2.0 compliant interfaces.
Projection: Original WGS84 UTM (recommended) or Lat/Lon
Imagery format: GeoTIFF, ECW or JPEG2000
Pixel resolution: 0.00027777 Degrees (1-arc-second, or ~30 m at the Equator)
Number of tiles: 883 for a near global coverage
F ile size of each tile: Compressed ~200MB; Uncompressed
<2GB
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| e.g., 14 tiles are used to make the Landsat Mosaic
of SE Australia, including New South Wales, Australia
Capital Territory, Victoria, South Australia,
and the Murray-Darling Catchment (wiki) Image size: 108000 x 54000 |