How to make a historical animation with Landsat

Here’s how to whip up a three decade animation of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, using Landsat Explorer. And it only takes a few minutes.

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0:00 Intro

0:20 Assembling the animation

1:47 Checking the result

2:14 Saving an animation as an MP4

2:44 More animation examples

3:33 Closing

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Here are direct links to the animations I show in this video. Just hit play:

Amazon deforestation: http://tinyurl.com/3drjz7s4
South Las Vegas: http://tinyurl.com/3yytn5e4
Lake Mead: http://tinyurl.com/cjr7cfbz
Bingham Canyon Mine: http://tinyurl.com/na6a6zne
Daxing Airport construction: http://tinyurl.com/bd32e78
Three Gorges Dam: http://tinyurl.com/yc3zud6w
Midwest agricultural season: http://tinyurl.com/4kw9767e
Atlas Mountains thermal: http://tinyurl.com/35343etw

For a more broad look at the capabilities of Landsat Explorer, check out this introduction that walks through the features and analysis tools.

Love, John

…UPDATE…

To make it easier to share insanely specific links to the Landsat Explorer app, we added some “copy link” buttons, including for animations. Just share the link and the recipients will see what you see.

About the author

John Nelson

I have far too much fun looking for ways to understand and present data visually, hopefully driving product strategy and engaging users. I work in the ArcGIS Living Atlas team at Esri, pushing and pulling data in all sorts of absurd ways and then sharing the process. I also design user experiences for maps and apps. When I'm not doing those things, I'm chasing around toddlers and wrangling chickens, and generally getting into other ad-hoc adventures. Life is good. You might also like these Styles for ArcGIS Pro: esriurl.com/nelsonstyles

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