Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) - Collection 2 Improvements

The Landsat Collection 2 U.S. Analysis Ready Data (ARD) is slated for public availability in Fall 2021 via EarthExplorer and commercial cloud environment. Collection 2 data provides several processing enhancements including a substantial improvement in the absolute geolocation accuracy of the global ground reference dataset which facilitates the interoperability of the Landsat U.S. ARD through time. The Landsat U.S. ARD includes Surface Reflectance, Surface Temperature, Top of Atmosphere (TOA) Reflectance, and TOA Brightness Temperature geophysical variables accompanied by Quality Assessment (QA) information and is available for the conterminous U.S., Alaska and Hawaii from 1982 to present. The initial release of Landsat C2 U.S. ARD will include products for the Landsat 4-8 instruments and new acquisitions from Landsat 9 will be added to the ARD collection upon availability of atmospheric auxiliary data required for Surface Reflectance and Surface Temperature processing. ARD specific changes include expanded spatial coverage, corrected projection parameters, metadata improvements, and updated data specifications. This presentation will provide an overview of the Landsat Collection 2 U.S. ARD and highlight the changes and improvements from Collection 1.