International, relevant to the Netherlands

Landsat

The American Landsat satellites have imaged the earth since 1972. That makes it the longest satellite image record there is: over Amsterdam alone 6,754 scenes, the oldest from 5 September 1972. Detail: 30 metres per pixel, 60 metres in the early years.

Earth observation Housing and land Climate and environmentAccountAPISatellite imageDownloadWorld · 30 metres

Behind schedule · updated 5 days ago · checked 17:23

Landsat scenes of Amsterdam: 138 scenes in 2025, 30% less than in 1985

Landsat scenes of Amsterdam, 1985 – 2025, in scenes. The highest point was 1985 (196).

Source: USGS, LandsatLook STAC (aggregate, Collection 2 Level-1) · opgehaald 25 oktober 2026 · selection: Opnamen waarop de Dam in Amsterdam (4.893 O, 52.373 N) staat, ongeacht bewolking; Vanaf 1985: het eerste volle jaar van Landsat 5, met opnamen om de zestien dagen (Landsat 1 begon in juli 1972 met veel minder opnamen)Open the table Single block

Landsat scenes of Amsterdam by satellite: most Landsat 5 (2,047 scenes), then Landsat 8 and Landsat 7

Landsat scenes of Amsterdam by satellite, oktober 2026, in scenes. Total: 4,640; the largest 8 of 8 categories are shown. Landsat 5 is 44% of the total.

What you can build with it1

ToolSatellite before and after: see how your town or polder changedPick a place and two years, and get two cloud-free satellite images side by side with a slider, plus a calculation of how much water became land.3 sourcesAdvanced

What can you do with it?4 ideas

Getting started

Watch a city grow

Find cloud-free summer images of Almere or the Maasvlakte, ten years apart. Put them side by side or make an animation.

Getting started

The Netherlands in 1972

The oldest scenes come from Landsat 1, with 60-metre pixels. Coarse, but enough to follow the broad outline of the country.

Advanced

Heat in the city

The landsat-c2l2-st collection gives surface temperature. Compare stony neighbourhoods with parks on a hot summer day.

Advanced

Forty years of green

Compute NDVI from the red and near-infrared bands for every summer since the 1980s and follow an area through time.

How to process it4 steps

Search the USGS catalogue

Searching needs no account. Sort with sortby=-properties.datetime (with 'properties.' in front) and use fields to drop assets and links.

https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/stac-server/collections/landsat-c2l2-sr/items?bbox=4.7,52.2,5.1,52.5&sortby=-properties.datetime&limit=3&fields=id,properties.datetime,properties.eo:cloud_cover,properties.platform,-assets,-links,-geometry

Filter on clouds

Use query with eo:cloud_cover. Over Amsterdam there were twelve scenes with less than 10 percent cloud in summer 2022.

https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/stac-server/search?collections=landsat-c2l2-sr&bbox=4.7,52.2,5.1,52.5&datetime=2022-06-01T00:00:00Z/2022-08-31T23:59:59Z&query=%7B%22eo:cloud_cover%22:%7B%22lt%22:10%7D%7D&limit=5

Download without an account via Planetary Computer
USGS requires a login, even for a thumbnail. Microsoft Planetary Computer offers the same Collection 2 Level-2 with an anonymous token, but lags a little behind.
```
https://planetarycomputer.microsoft.com/api/sas/v1/token/landsat-c2-l2
```
Read only what you need
The bands are 30-metre Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs. Use rasterio or rioxarray to read only the red and near-infrared (nir08) bands for your area.

Interesting combinations

geometrie

How much has a municipality been paved over since 1985?

Clip the images per year to the municipal boundary and count pixels with a low NDVI.

Combine with District and neighbourhood map

coördinaten en datum

A longer series with more detail

Use Landsat for the years before 2015 and Sentinel-2 after. Mind the difference in pixel size.

Combine with Copernicus Sentinel-2

Similar sources

Copernicus Sentinel-2
Sharper (10 metres) and more frequent, but only since 2015.
NASA GIBS and Worldview
Ready-made daily images as a map layer, coarser and without raw bands.
MP
Microsoft Planetary Computer, Landsat Collection 2 not in the index yet
The same Level-2 data, downloadable without an account, about a week later.

What to watch out for

USGS login
Searching is open, but every USGS download (including the thumbnail) redirects to the login page. On Amazon S3 the bucket is 'requester pays'.
Clouds
In summer 2026 Landsat 8 and 9 passed over Amsterdam about every four days, but it was often cloudy. Filter on eo:cloud_cover and check the images yourself.
Stripes in Landsat 7
Since late May 2003 every Landsat 7 scene misses strips, about 22 percent of the image. Prefer Landsat 5 or 8 for those years.
Not every year equally good
The oldest scenes have 60-metre pixels and four bands. Level-2 (corrected for the atmosphere) only starts in August 1982.

APISTAC 1.0.0 · read 16 Oct 2026

StandardSTAC 1.0.0docs

Access no key

Searching is anonymous. The files themselves require an account (stated in the collection). from the description

Size19,670

scenes tested

Formats

GeoJSON (zoekresultaten)

Base URL

https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/stac-server

Endpoints 3

GET/collections/landsat-c2l2-sr/itemsscenes in this collection, with bbox, datetime, limit
GET/POST/searchsearch across collections, with filter (CQL2), sortby and fields
GET/collections/landsat-c2l2-sr/queryablesfilterable fields

Filtering from the description

CQL2 (text or JSON) on the queryables

Parameters 6

`bbox`	lon/lat box: west,south,east,north	platform
`datetime`	date or period, e.g. 2026-06-01/2026-08-31	platform
`limit`	per page; next via link rel=next	platform
`sortby`	sorting, e.g. -datetime (newest first)	from the description
`filter`	CQL2 filter on the queryables, e.g. eo:cloud_cover < 10	from the description
`fields`	return only these fields	from the description

Limits and pitfalls

sortby=-datetime gives a 400 ('No mapping found for [datetime]'); use sortby=-properties.datetime (15 Oct 2026). tested
fields=id,properties.datetime does not drop assets and links; add -assets,-links. That saves about 22 KB per scene. tested
Filter on cloud cover with the query extension: query={"eo:cloud_cover":{"lt":10}}. A text filter (filter=eo:cloud_cover<10) gave an error; filter expects CQL2 JSON here. tested
Files via https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/data/ redirect to the USGS login page (ERS). Microsoft Planetary Computer issues an anonymous token for the same data. tested

Try it HTTP 200 · 840 ms · 15 Oct

https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/stac-server/collections/landsat-c2l2-sr/items?bbox=4.7,52.2,5.1,52.5&sortby=-properties.datetime&limit=3&fields=id,properties.datetime,properties.eo:cloud_cover,properties.platform,-assets,-links,-geometry

{
  "type": "FeatureCollection",
  "numberMatched": 4630,
  "numberReturned": 3,
  "features": [
    {
      "stac_version": "1.0.0",
      "bbox": [
        1.888558990141831,
        50.61142258385865
      ],
      "id": "LC08_L2SP_199024_20261011_20261015_02_T1_SR",
      "collection": "landsat-c2l2-sr",
      "type": "Feature",
      "properties": {
        "datetime": "2026-10-11T10:40:04.812085Z",
        "eo:cloud_cover": 37.87,
        "platform": "LANDSAT_8"
      }
    },
    {
      "stac_version": "1.0.0",
      "bbox": [
        2.4822383108926482,
        52.01759582018972
      ],
      "id": "LC08_L2SP_199023_20261011_20261015_02_T1_SR",
      "collection": "landsat-c2l2-sr",
      "type": "Feature",
      "properties": {
        "datetime": "2026-10-11T10:39:40.921044Z",
        "eo:cloud_cover": 18.97,
        "platform": "LANDSAT_8"
      }
    }
  ],
  "links": [
    {
      "rel": "next",
      "title": "Next page of Items",

Shortened response, saved at harvest time. Click the URL for the real, current response.

Read from collection: bands, coverage, licence, access · fields you can filter on · what the search API supports (conformsTo). Labels: from the description stated in what the api itself publishes. tested from our own small call. platform applies to every api on this platform, per its documentation. experience learned while building open data index.

How to fetch it

curl "https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/stac-server/collections/landsat-c2l2-sr/items?bbox=4.7,52.2,5.1,52.5&sortby=-properties.datetime&limit=5&fields=id,properties.datetime,properties.eo:cloud_cover,-assets,-links,-geometry"