True surface color, harmonized daily (Landsat, 30 m)
What it measures. This gives the true reflected color of the land surface at 30-meter detail, cleaned of the atmosphere's effects so the same ground looks consistent over time. It pairs with the matching Sentinel-2 product so the two can be stacked together.
How it's made. Derived from the Landsat 8 and 9 satellites' Operational Land Imager, then atmospherically corrected, cloud-masked and aligned to a common grid so it blends seamlessly with Sentinel-2 imagery.
How & where you'd use it. Good for tracking crops, forests, water and land-cover change frequently and at fine detail, since combining Landsat and Sentinel-2 gives a clear view of the land every day or two.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2013-04-11 → ongoing
- Measured byLANDSAT-8 (OLI) · LANDSAT-9 (OLI)
- Processing levelLevel 3
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- FormatsCOG
- StatusACTIVE
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
The Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) project provides consistent surface reflectance (SR) and top of atmosphere (TOA) brightness data from a virtual constellation of satellite sensors. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) is housed aboard the joint NASA/USGS Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 satellites, while the Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) is mounted aboard Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-2A, Sentinel-2B, and Sentinel-2C satellites. The combined measurement enables global observations of the land every 1.6 days at 30-meter (m) spatial resolution. The HLS project uses a set of algorithms to obtain seamless products from OLI and MSI that include atmospheric correction, cloud and cloud-shadow masking, spatial co-registration and common gridding, illumination and view angle normalization, and spectral bandpass adjustment. The HLSL30 product provides 30-m Nadir Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF)-Adjusted Reflectance (NBAR) and is derived from Landsat 8/9 OLI data products. The [HLSS30](https://doi.org/10.5067/HLS/HLSS30.002) and HLSL30 products are gridded to the same resolution and Military Grid Reference System ([MGRS](https://hls.gsfc.nasa.gov/products-description/tiling-system/)) tiling system and thus are “stackable” for time series analysis. The HLSL30 product is provided in Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) format, and each band is distributed as a separate file. There are 11 bands included in the HLSL30 product along with one quality assessment (QA) band and four angle bands. See the User Guide for a more detailed description of the individual bands provided in the HLSL30 product. The HLS project is funded by NASA’s Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) which provides data products developed to meet the needs of stakeholders from US government agencies. For information on [known issues](https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/documents/2434/HLS_v2.0_L30_known_issues_April2026.pdf) see the anomalies link under the Documents and Resources tab.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="HLSL30",
version="2.0",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from LPCLOUD Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Earthdata Search allows users to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data. GET DATA
- The technical information in the User's Guide enables users to interpret and use the data products. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- The ATBD provides physical theory and mathematical procedures for the calculations used to produce the data products. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- The HLS Quick Guide provides directions for accessing the data in Earthdata Search. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Getting Started with Cloud-Native HLS Data in Python is a Jupyter Notebook tutorial. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- HLS Subsetting, Processing and Exporting Reformatted (HLS SuPER) data prep script is a command line executable Python script that finds, accesses, and processes HLS data according to input criteria. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- HLS download helper script VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Getting Started with Cloud-Native Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) Data in R VIEW RELATED INFORMATION