NASA tempo Project

RapidEye satellite imagery was used to create annual landslide initiation point inventories along three major highways in Nepal. The collection also includes a daily snow reanalysis data set for High Mountain Asia and global grayscale infrared images from Nimbus satellites in the 1960s and 1970s. Data is sourced from the aws_open_data platform under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Mapping landslide risk along transportation corridors based on the annual landslide inventories for Nepal's highways.
• Modeling regional water balance and snowmelt runoff based on daily snow water equivalent (SWE) and snow depth estimates for High Mountain Asia.
• Analyzing historical cloud cover and surface temperature patterns based on global Nimbus satellite infrared imagery from the 1960s and 1970s.

Strengths

• Includes data from multiple satellite sources (RapidEye, Nimbus series) for varied analysis.
• Covers specific, high-impact geographic regions like Nepal's highways and High Mountain Asia.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license for broad reuse.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Some Nimbus data sets are noted as not georeferenced and contain temporal gaps due to missing data.

Provenance

Source

aws_open_data platform, likely originating from NASA.

Collection Method

Created from satellite imagery (RapidEye, Nimbus HRIR/THIR sensors).

Time Range

Covers periods including 1964, 1966, 1969-1975 for Nimbus data; temporal coverage for landslide and snowpack data is not specified.

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Includes Nepal (specific highways) and High Mountain Asia region; Nimbus imagery is global.