North Carolina and Landsat

Abstract

North Carolina’s rich history and importance in the colonial days played a critical role in the Nation’s economic development. It was also the setting for events like the Wright Brothers’ famous first flight of a powered aircraft, called “Wright Flyer,” which took place in Kitty Hawk in 1903. Today, North Carolina license plates proudly proclaim the State as “First in Flight.” The aerospace and defense sectors remain large players in the State’s economy to this day. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Electric Aviation, and others maintain a presence in the Tar Heel State, and military installations dot the landscape. It is fitting, then, that North Carolinians rely upon a satellite system to monitor and study the health of their State’s vast and varied terrain: its coastal plain, the sweeping valleys and peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the fertile rolling plateau of the Piedmont ecoregion that separates the two. The U.S. Geological Survey Landsat satellite program’s unparalleled 54-plus-year record of Earth surface change offers scientists, watershed and land managers, urban planners, and others insight into landscape change, both drastic and mild. Landsat observations document everything from posthurricane floods that push inland to subtle shifts in forest composition and coastal encroachment on urban and military infrastructure.