2026-09-03 –, Dahlia1
The NISAR mission launched in July 2025, and data is now publicly available. This talk presents a range of open source tools available for accessing and transforming L-band data from the mission.
The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission launched in July 2025, and data is now freely available to the public. SAR sensors use active microwave signals that penetrate through clouds and smoke, allowing imagery of Earth’s surface to be acquired on every pass. Regular imaging cycles, combined with the ability to quantify surface deformation on the centimeter scale, make NISAR a powerful tool for monitoring landscape processes.
NISAR carries sensors for both L-band (24 cm) and S-band (12 cm) wavelengths. The L-band dataset is hosted by NASA, while the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) hosts the S-band data. We will focus on the L-band data products, which are collected globally with a 12-day repeat cycle.
NISAR data can be searched for and accessed using map-based web interfaces as well as programmatic approaches. Minimally processed data products are available, but there are also a number of analysis-ready products generated by the mission, making SAR data more accessible to the broader geospatial community.
NISAR data files are archived in cloud storage using an HDF5 file format that has been optimized to support cloud computing workflows. Not only is this file format less familiar to many users, the footprint of each NISAR data acquisition is very large. As such, it is important to be aware of approaches for efficiently accessing, subsetting, and loading the data.
The Alaska Satellite Facility has published the NISAR Data User Guide to help users find all the information they need to know about accessing and working with NISAR data in one place.
We will present a brief introduction to SAR remote sensing and NISAR datasets, focusing on the most accessible product types. We will describe the resources available for accessing and loading NISAR L-band data, including methods that leverage cloud computing; direct users to guidance for working with the data in QGIS; and highlight open-source software (isce3, xarray, rioxarray, s3fs, h5py, gdal, asf_search, earthaccess, etc.) available for use in programmatic workflows.
NISAR Data User Guide: https://nisar-docs.asf.alaska.edu/
Indicate what is (are) the open source project(s) essential in your talk:QGIS, GDAL, isce3, xarray, rioxarray, s3fs, h5py, asf_search, earthaccess
I make my conference contribution available under the CC BY 4.0 license. The conference contribution comprises the abstract, the text contribution for the conference proceedings, the presentation materials as well as the video recording and live transmission of the presentation:
Heidi Kristenson is a Senior GIS Specialist at the Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF). Her work is focused on developing tools, products, services and workflows that make Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data more accessible to the geospatial community.
Alex Lewandowski is a research software engineer at the Alaska Satellite Facility. His work focuses on developing tools and workflows that help geospatial data users learn about Synthetic Aperture Radar data and integrate it into their work.