Glossary
Satellite imagery analysis
Extracting information such as land cover, change or object detection from images captured by orbiting satellites.
Also called: earth observation analysis
Satellite imagery analysis extracts usable information, land cover classification, change detection, object counting, environmental monitoring, from images captured by orbiting satellites. It is a specific application of the broader field of remote sensing, which also covers airborne and drone-based sensors, not only satellites.
Analysis ranges from simple band-math indices, like the normalized difference vegetation index for vegetation, to modern computer vision models trained to detect specific objects or classify land use directly from imagery, such as counting ships in a port or mapping informal settlements. Satellite revisit frequency and spatial resolution trade off against each other and against cost: a given satellite typically offers either frequent, coarse-resolution coverage or infrequent, high-resolution coverage, rarely both, which shapes what questions a given dataset can answer.
Outputs are usually loaded into a geographic information system for further mapping and analysis, and the field underpins deforestation monitoring, disaster response, agricultural yield estimation and defense intelligence. Common pitfalls are cloud cover silently gapping time series in optical, non-radar, imagery, and comparing imagery from different sensors or processing levels as if they were directly equivalent, when calibration and resolution differences can produce apparent "change" that is really just a sensor artifact.
Last reviewed September 22, 2026