search open earth observation imagery on the earth search stac api
domain: earth-search.aws.element84.com · 4 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
POST or GET https://earth-search.aws.element84.com/v1/search with a STAC ItemSearch body (collections, bbox or intersects geometry, datetime range, and optional property filters like eo:cloud_cover).
Call GET /v1/collections first to see current collection ids (e.g. sentinel-2-l2a / sentinel-2-c1-l2a, landsat-c2-l2, sentinel-1-grd, cop-dem-glo-30, naip).
Page through results using the STAC API's 'next' link in the response's links array rather than manually incrementing offsets.
Each returned Item's assets map gives direct HTTPS/S3 URLs (often cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs) for individual bands/products, readable directly by cloud-native raster tools.
Known gotchas
Earth Search is transitioning users from the legacy sentinel-2-l2a collection to sentinel-2-c1-l2a (USGS Collection 2 based); pick the collection deliberately since both may coexist for a period.
This is a metadata/search API only — actual pixel data lives in AWS Registry of Open Data buckets, some of which have their own access terms, so check each collection before bulk downloading.
Large-area or long-time-range searches without a tight cloud-cover/property filter can return very large result sets; use STAC paging and property filters rather than pulling everything client-side.
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