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Module Landsat, one of the longest running sources of commercial satellite imagery (Landsat 4, 5 and 7 in
4 particular), refers to a series of US-owned satellites put into orbit around the Earth to acquire images

and collect environmental data about the Earth’s surface. These satellites have been collecting images
of the Earth’s surface for more than 30 years and have acquired millions of images. These images
provide a unique resource for people who work in agriculture, geology, forestry, regional planning,

education, mapping and global change research. One of the benefits of satellite imagery is the ability to
9-12 December, 2013 thermal). This allows complex image processing and analysis in many different ways. Satellite imagery is
capture multispectral images (i.e., images in two or more spectral bands, such as visible , infrared and

also provided in a standardized spatial format, so integrating these data with socio-economic data for
integrated environmental assessment becomes much easier. Nevertheless, problems of organizations
and governments using different formats still exist over large areas, and across national boundaries.

The following images are an example of satellite imagery. The images show
Figure 4
the Greening of Al’ Isawiyah desert, Saudi Arabia 1991, 2000 and 2004

Source: UNEP, 2005. One planet, Many people. ,Atlas of our changing environment

26 Monitoring, Data and Indicators