How it works

Pick a place (latitude/longitude + radius, or a bounding box) and two dates. The tool builds side-by-side NASA GIBS images for each chosen layer — MODIS/VIIRS true colour, 7-2-1 false colour, 30 m Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2, NDVI composites and VIIRS night lights — with the resolution, revisit and cloud caveats you need to read them correctly.

The area is a lat/lon box: from a centre, half-width r km gives ±r/111.32° latitude and ±r/(111.32·cos φ)° longitude. Image height follows the box aspect in degrees (plate carrée, EPSG:4326).
Images come from NASA GIBS via the Worldview Snapshot API (https://wvs.earthdata.nasa.gov/api/v1/snapshot, REQUEST=GetSnapshot, CRS=EPSG:4326, BBOX=south,west,north,east, TIME=YYYY-MM-DD); an equivalent GIBS WMS 1.3.0 GetMap URL is returned too.
Layer identifiers, maximum resolutions (tile-matrix sets), formats and first available dates were taken from the GIBS EPSG:4326 "best" WMTS capabilities. Composite layers are requested at the start of their period (16-day periods begin on day-of-year 1, 17, 33, …; monthly on day 1).
If one image pixel is smaller than half the layer resolution the result flags "upsampled": detail finer than the native resolution is interpolation, not information.
No automated change detection: the tool cannot download image pixels, so it does not compute change statistics. Compare visually and mind clouds, season, sun angle and sensor differences.

Imagery courtesy of NASA EOSDIS GIBS. Visual comparison only; not suitable for legal or insurance evidence without the source data.

Sources

NASA Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) (NASA EOSDIS)
GIBS WMTS capabilities (EPSG:4326, best) (NASA EOSDIS)
Worldview Snapshots (NASA EOSDIS)

For scripts and AI agents

JSON API: POST https://satellitechangeexplorer.usefulweb.site/api/v1/calculate (same calculation as this page)
Interface description: OpenAPI 3.1 · AI guide: llms.txt
MCP server (Streamable HTTP): https://satellitechangeexplorer.usefulweb.site/mcp · tool name satellite_change_explorer

Example request

curl -s -X POST https://satellitechangeexplorer.usefulweb.site/api/v1/calculate \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"lat":30.6,"lon":31.2,"radiusKm":80,"dateBefore":"2025-07-20","dateAfter":"2026-07-20","layers":["modis-terra-truecolor","ndvi-16day"],"width":512}'

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Satellite Change Explorer

How it works

Sources

For scripts and AI agents

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