Satellite imagery powers countless applications, from environmental monitoring to urban planning and historical landscape analysis. Below are popular widely used platforms that provide both global and regional coverage. Click any source below to explore detailed guides on searching, downloading, and applying imagery for your research or teaching.
Scholars GeoPortal – A geoportal serving Ontario university users that provides access to diverse satellite and geospatial datasets, optimized for academic research.
USGS Earth Explorer – A foundational portal to access historical and current Landsat data (starting from 1972), including medium-resolution multispectral imagery.
NASA Earthdata Search – NASA Earthdata has more than 50 datasets on atmosphere, land, Ocean, energy, environment and much more on a daily, weekly and monthly frequency. The datasets are available in the form of JPEG, PNG, Google Earth and GeoTIFF.
Govt of Canada Geospatial Data – The Government of Canada Geospatial Data Extraction Tool (formerly GeoGratis) provides free access to geospatial data and maps published by Natural Resources Canada.
Global Change Master Directory – The Global Change Master Directory is an extensive directory of descriptive and locational information about data sets and services relevant to global change research.
ESA’s Sentinel data – The Copernicus Open Access Hub (previously known as Sentinels Scientific Data Hub) provides complete, free and open access to Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 user products, starting from the In-Orbit Commissioning Review (IOCR).