Landsat View: Ontario, California

Thirty-five miles due east of downtown Los Angeles lies the city of Ontario, California. In 1881 two Canadian brothers established the town, naming it after their native city. By 1891 Ontario, Calif., was incorporated as a city. The farming-based economy (olives, citrus, dairy) of the city helped it grow to 20,000 by the 1960s. Subsequently, warehousing and freight trafficking took over as the major industry and the city’s population was over 160,000 by 2010. The L.A./Ontario International Airport is now America’s 15th busiest cargo airport.

In these natural color Landsat 5 images, the massive growth of the city between 1985 and 2010 can be seen. The airport, found in the southwest portion of the images, added a number of runways and large warehousing structures now dominate the once rural areas surrounding the airport. In these images vegetation is green and brown and urban structures are bright white and gray. (Note there is a large dry riverbed in the northeast corner that is also bright white, but its nonlinear appearance sets it apart visually).

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NASA and the U.S. Department of the Interior through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) jointly manage Landsat, and the USGS preserves a 40-year archive of Landsat images that is freely available over the Internet. The next Landsat satellite, now known as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) and later to be called Landsat 8, is scheduled for launch in 2013.

In honor of Landsat’s 40th anniversary in July 2012, the USGS released the LandsatLook viewer – a quick, simple way to go forward and backward in time, pulling images of anywhere in the world out of the Landsat archive.

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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

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