Rice Field - Blog Posts

Which Landsat Image Do You Love?

Feeling competitive? We’ve got a game for you to play in! Tournament Earth: The Landsat Games is happening right now, and as we get to the final entries, the competition is heating up.

You can help us pick the winner by voting for one of the remaining four Landsat images of our home planet! Our competition started with 32 images, divided into categories by what they show: land, water, ice & snow, and human impact.

So, what do you think? Which one of these images is going for gold?

Land

First up, we have an image of the Markha River and surrounding Central Siberian Plateau, acquired in 2020 by Landsat 8. The hypnotic undulations of striping across the landscape carried this image to victory over the rest of the Land images -- a particularly tough category, given that these images all come from Landsat.

Water

It’s not all land, though! The bright blues and greens of this false-color image of the Atchafalaya Delta in Louisiana helped carry it to victory in the Water category. The image, taken in 2020 by Landsat 8, shows a region that’s subject to erosion of land by wind and rising sea levels.

Ice & Snow

Brrr! Did it get cold in here? That’s the finalist from the Ice and Snow category, an image of sea ice around Russia’s New Siberian Islands. The image, collected by Landsat 8 in June 2016, shows sea ice during its annual seasonal breakup.

Human Impact

Humans have been shaping the planet around us for hundreds of years. Some changes, like rice fields in the Sacramento Valley, are visible from space. Landsat 8 collected this false-color image of flooded rice fields in December 2018.

So, now it’s up to you! Which image is your favorite? There can only be one winner of Tournament Earth: The Landsat Games. Get your vote in, and then get ready to watch as we launch the next Landsat satellite, Landsat 9, in September.

The Landsat mission is a partnership between us at NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Together, we’ve been using Landsat satellites to collect nearly 50 years of images of our home planet.

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