I recently came across the AρρEEARS platform when looking for a quick bulk-download of MODIS satellite imagery. AρρEEARS or Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples is a web platform hosting a wide range of geospatial datasets (e.g. MODIS, Landsat, ASTER, etc.). To access the website, you just need your USGS login creadentials. A full list of the datasets available can be found here.

The first thing I liked about this platform is the fact that you can pre-process the data before placing the order (e.g. clip to a region of interest (ROI) with a custom shapefile, re-project, pre-select particular bands, etc.).

The ordering process

Start a new request

Once you’re logged in, navigate to the Extract Area Sample page and ‘Start a new request’.
Enter a custom name for your request (e.g. product requested, date, ROI, etc.). Then select the area of interest for your imagery order. Here, you have two choices:

  • Draw a polygon directly on the basemap provided
  • Import a vector polygon file
    • ESRI shapefile (in a .zip folder containing the .shp, .dbf, .prj, and .shx files)
    • GeoJSON (.json or .geojson) file

If you plan on re-projecting the satellite imagery at the end of your order, just remember to upload a vector polygon in the SAME projection.

Select your date range by typing in exact dates or browse the calendar. Note that if you are interested in specific date ranges over recurring years (e.g. seasons), select time-period of interest, then tick the ‘Is Date Recurring’ box.

Next, type the name of the geospatial datasets you are looking for. To make sure the dataset is the one you want, click on the (i) icon next to the product name to see a brief description of its parameters.
If you don’t want to download all the bands just select the ones you’re interested in.

Here comes the interesting part. You can choose the output files to be converted to GeoTiffs or NetCDF-4 format. No more HDF4-5 files!
You can also choose to re-project the files to one of the 11 projections available in the drop-down menu. More documentation about the pre-selected projection and the projection methods can be found on the website.

Now you can hit the ‘Submit’ button. A green banner indicating a successful submission will appear at the top of the page. You will then receive a notification via email from lpdaac@usgs.gov letting you know that the submission was successful. The email also contains recommendations on how to properly cite AρρEEARS.

Viewing your results and track the progress of your request

On the main AρρEEARS toolbar, navigate to the ‘Explore’ tab. Then you can visualise all your pending requests, the ones in progress, and the finalised requests. From there, you manage (delete) , explore or downloadyour results.

Downloading the data

Once the request has been processed and you are happy about the content of your requested data, you can now download it.