ECOSTRESS: Global Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity at 70m Resolution

Global data between 52° N and 52° S latitudes collected by the ECOSTRESS instrument on the International Space Station. The dataset provides atmospherically corrected land surface temperature and emissivity values derived from five thermal infrared bands at a 70-meter spatial resolution. It is produced by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with the latest update noted in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling plant water stress and evapotranspiration based on land surface temperature measurements.
• Analyzing urban heat island effects using high-resolution (70m) thermal data.
• Studying surface thermal properties and emissivity across different land cover types.
• Monitoring drought impacts on vegetation using temperature-derived stress indicators.

Strengths

• High spatial resolution of 70 meters for detailed thermal analysis.
• Provides multiple derived layers including LST, emissivity for 5 bands, quality control, and error estimates.
• Data is atmospherically corrected using a physics-based Temperature and Emissivity Separation (TES) algorithm.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Data acquisition experienced gaps and anomalies (e.g., 3-band mode from 2019-2023) as noted in the known issues.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected by the ECOSTRESS instrument on the International Space Station using five thermal infrared bands.

Time Range

Data acquisition began after launch on June 29, 2018, with operations ongoing.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 03:01:13.171759; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage between 52° N and 52° S latitudes.