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image of HLS data
HLS data showing croplands in the US
image of HLS Sentinel-2 data over Kansas

HLS

Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2

The Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) project is an extension of research conducted at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, that takes input data from the joint NASA/USGS Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 and the ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-2A, Sentinel-2B, and Sentinel-2C satellites to generate a harmonized, analysis-ready surface reflectance data product with observations every two to three days.

Principal Investigator

Dr. Jeff Masek

Partners

USGS

Data Centers

LP DAAC

The HLS project is a major outcome of the Satellite Needs Working Group assessment in 2016. In that assessment, federal agencies and end users identified a need for more frequent Landsat-like observations to track short-term changes in vegetation and other land components to support agricultural monitoring and land cover classification at moderate to high resolution in both the visible and thermal components of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectral similarities between the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), the Landsat 9 OLI-2, and the Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) present an opportunity to harmonize data from these sensors to generate higher-frequency imagery products for land surface monitoring and applications.

Previous versions of HLS data products produced by the HLS Science Team at Goddard had limited spatial coverage — only covering North America and other select global locations. The current version of the HLS algorithm is a cloud-based software stack that expands the spatial coverage to include all land masses globally, outside of Antarctica.

Two data products are generated as part of the HLS project: the L30 data product generated with Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 data, and the S30 product generated using Sentinel-2 data. These data are available through Earthdata Search as well as through NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC). Feedback or questions about HLS data products can be made in the Earthdata Forum for HLS.

Improving Land Monitoring Capabilities

HLS data products greatly improve current publicly-available remote sensing land monitoring capabilities, particularly in terms of the frequency of land surface observations through time. The harmonization of HLS ensures that the Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 collection (30-meter spatial resolution with a 16-day repeat period) and the Sentinel-2A/B/C collection (10 to 20-meter spatial resolution with a five-day repeat period) can be used as if they were a single collection. Through HLS, land surface observations can be acquired at an unprecedented 30-meter spatial resolution every two to three days.

The frequent revisit times of HLS allow for time series of land surface applications at the field/plot scale, which supports a wide range of applications, including agricultural health, insect infestations, and natural hazard impacts. Data from the Sentinel-2C mission (launched in 2024) is now active and incorporated into HLS data products, further improving re-visit times and land monitoring capabilities.

Chart of temporal coverage of Landsat and Sentinel 2 Constellation.

HLS revisit times (orange line) and scheduled Landsat and Sentinel-2 launch dates (green and blue bars). Click on image for larger view. Credit: HLS Science Team.

The HLS project is a collaborative effort between NASA and other external agencies, including the USGS and ESA. 

At NASA, the HLS algorithm is developed by the HLS Science Team and is ported and operated by the Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team (IMPACT) located at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. The data products are archived at and distributed by NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), which is a partnership between NASA and the USGS. Coordination between these partners on the data life cycle ensures that HLS data are high-quality (research quality once the provisional tag is removed), freely available, and accessible to end users with two to three day latency. 

External HLS partners (USGS and ESA) provide access to the input data at scale for global HLS data to be produced within the latency targets identified above. In addition, USGS provides the source code for atmospheric correction so the Level 1 input top of atmosphere reflectance can be converted to the output L30 and S30 surface reflectance data products.

HLS filenames (i.e., the local granule ID) follow a naming convention that gives useful information regarding the specific product.

In this example of a swath product, the filename HLS.S30.T60HTE.2022103T222539.v2.0.B01.tif indicates:

  • HLS.S30 – Product Short Name
  • T60HTE– MGRS Tile ID (T+5-digits)
  • 2022103– Julian Date of Acquisition (YYYYDDD)
  • T222539– Time of Acquisition (HHMMSS)
  • v2.0 – Collection Version
  • B01 – Spectral Band, Angle Band or QA (Fmask)
  • tif – Data Format (Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF)

The HLS Long Name (i.e., Collection-Level) convention also provides useful information regarding the product.

In this example for an HLSS30 dataset, all products belonging to the HLS Sentinel-2 Multi-Spectral Instrument Surface Reflectance Daily Global 30 m V 2.0 collection have the following characteristics:

  • Sentinel-2 Multi-Spectral Instrument – Instrument/Sensor
  • Surface Reflectance – Geophysical Parameter
  • Daily – Temporal Resolution
  • Global – Global or Swath
  • 30 m – Spatial Resolution
  • V 2.0 – Collection Version

The HLS tiling system is identical to the one used for Sentinel-2. The tiles’ dimensions are 109.8 km squares with an overlap of 4,900 m on each side. The system is aligned with the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), and its naming convention is derived from the UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) system. The UTM system divides the Earth’s surface into 60 vertical zones. Each UTM zone has a vertical width of 6° of longitude and horizontal width of 8° of latitude, as shown in the map below. Each UTM zone is subdivided into MGRS 110 x 110 km zones.

World map overlaid with tiling grid.

HLS uses a processing chain involving several separate radiometric and geometric adjustments, with a goal of eliminating differences in retrieved surface reflectance arising solely from differences in instrumentation. Input data products from Landsat 8/9 (Collection 2 Level 1T top-of-atmosphere reflectance or top-of-atmosphere apparent temperature) and Sentinel-2 (L1C top-of-atmosphere reflectance) are ingested for HLS processing. A series of radiometric and geometric corrections are applied to convert data to surface reflectance, adjust for BRDF differences, and adjust for spectral bandpass differences.

Two types of products are then generated: “HLSS30” and “HLSL30.” These products have been radiometrically harmonized to the maximum extent and then gridded to a common 30-meter UTM basis using the Sentinel-2 tile system. The S30 and L30 products are resampled as needed to a common 30-meter resolution UTM projection and tiled using the Sentinel-2 Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) UTM grid.

A detailed description of methods applied for processing and harmonizing Landsat 8/9 and Sentinel-2 data is described in the graphic below.

A graphic showing the Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 workflow

LP DAAC distributes both the L30 and S30 products:

S30: MSI harmonized surface reflectance resampled to 30 m into the Sentinel-2 tiling system and adjusted to Landsat 8/9 spectral response function.
L30: OLI harmonized surface reflectance and Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) brightness temperature resampled to 30 m into the Sentinel-2 tiling system.

HLS products have two sources of metadata: the embedded COG metadata, and the external ECS (generated by the EOSDIS Core System) metadata. The COG metadata contains valuable information, including global attributes and dataset specific attributes pertaining to the granule. The ECS .met file is the external metadata file in XML format, which is delivered to the user along with the HLS product. It provides a subset of the COG metadata. Key features of HLS metadata attributes include georeferencing information and spectral band and QA band attributes:

  • The ULX represents the X-coordinate of the Upper-left corner of the Upper-left pixel.
  • The ULY represents the Y-coordinate of the Upper-left corner of the Upper-left pixel.
  • The NCOLS represents the number of columns.
  • The NROWS represents the number of rows.
  • The DATASTRIP_ID is the datastrip name in the SAFE (Sentinel Standard Archive Format for Europe) file for the HLSS30 product.
  • The HORIZONTAL_CS_CODE is the projection code in EPSG format.
  • The HORIZONTAL_CS_NAME is the projection name