Satellite Exploration of Thailand > Satellite Image Resources

ESDI - Earth Science Data Interface / University of Maryland
The GLCF - Global Land Cover Facility of the University of Maryland maintains an extensive archive of Landsat images. These images are basically for free.

The search page captured on the right provides a clickable map. For other search interfaces, look here.

The ESDI allows you to download whole Landsat frame images in separate color bands. But they don't provide a handy browser like the GeoZoom to browse through their images. They do provide 1/15 thumbnail of Landsat frames but, to see any further details, you must download whole image files, which can be quite a challenging task.


Data Set Availability

Following maps show their data set availability:

[Update: Both their MSS and ETM+ image archives now cover whole Thailand.]

Data Set Example

If you search their archive for Path 128 / Row 50 (roughly covering the Dangrek Mountain Range and the Thai-Cambodian border north of Aranya Prathet), you will find one data set as follows:


By clicking on this data set, you will see a thumbnail image which can be somewhat enlarged:



And details of the data set:



Suppose you want to compose a RGB=742 image of this frame. You need to download following three files:



If you have a stable 56k modem connection, this can be done in about 6 - 10 hours. This is a long wait, and the download process may sometimes fail (!), but if you want a full-reslution image of a full frame, it is much easier - and often faster - than downloading hundreds of GeoZoom images and stitching them together. Also, the quality of images you get seems better than those by the GeoZoom.


ESDI Sample Resolution - R348, Lam Nang Rong Dam
TM, RGB=742 (brightness adjusted), png format, Jan 8, 1990		 Corresponding Image from the GeoZoom
ETM+, RGB=742 (contrast stretched), jpg format, Feb 12, 2002

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