View imagery for your area of interest

The Earth Blox data catalogue features petabytes of data from globally recognised providers known for their scientific excellence. We know that the use of satellite imagery is essential for providing context to other data layers. Given all satellite imagery has different characteristics, this guide has been designed to help you assess which is most suitable for your needs. To decide which option is best for you, let’s compare a few key factors:

As of 1st April 2025, free access to NICFI tropical basemaps ended. However, there are a variety of other imagery options available on the Earth Blox platform. You can continue to use a range of high-quality imagery in Earth Blox, which remain powerful tools for many of our users across a wide range of geographies and applications.

Summary

Google Basemaps

Google basemaps are our default basemap provided. With both a roadmap and a satellite version, this imagery is usually very high resolution, particularly in urban areas. This is a mosaic of imagery from different collection periods and suppliers, most of it updated within the last 1 - 3 years, if not sooner.

If your main reason for needing a basemap is to have high-resolution imagery to gain a better understanding of your location, then the Google basemaps are ideal for this. However, the mosaic aspect means this data does not have a historical aspect and cannot be used to look at change in an area, nor can you be guaranteed that features visible in the imagery still remain (e.g. areas of forest may have been felled).

If you need to know the specific dates of the imagery or see how the location has changed over time, you can explore our freely available satellite data sources.

Jones Point State Wildlife Management Area, Arkansas, United States

Google Basemap Imagery

ESA Sentinel-2

Sentinel-2, provided by the European Space Agency (ESA), is a free satellite imagery source with global coverage. It captures data at a 10m resolution with a revisit time of 5 days, making it highly suitable for monitoring vegetation, agriculture, and environmental changes.

If you are looking for higher resolution imagery and are interested in more recent changes, then Sentinel-2 is the ideal choice. 

Jones Point State Wildlife Management Area, Arkansas, United States

ESA Sentinel-2 Imagery, 13th March 2025

NASA Harmonized Landsat Collection

The NASA Landsat collection also provides freely available satellite imagery with global coverage. It combines data from all Landsat missions (4, 5, 7, 8 and 9), offering consistent 30m resolution imagery with a revisit time of roughly 16 days.

If your primary need is long-term historical analysis or tracking landscape changes, the Landsat collection is well suited for this, as it provides a continuous record dating back to 1982. However, the moderate resolution means it is less suitable for applications requiring high-detail imagery, such as projects with small parcels or complex areas.

Jones Point State Wildlife Management Area, Arkansas, United States

NASA Landsat Imagery, 19th March 2025