Download LandSat 28m resolution
satellite images of Jordan

The 28m resolution LandSat images available here were processed from the MrSid images available on the NASA MrSid Image Server web site.  Those images are in UTM projection, and do not include the header information, which makes reprojecting them a real pain.  Since Jordan is in UTM zones 36 and 37 it doesn't make sense to try to deal with the satellite images in UTM zones, because they don't display properly if you try to tile images from two zones.  Instead, they display on top of each other (thanks to NASA's not including the header information in the MrSid image).

In order to make these images more useable for those of us who work in the southern Levant, I've had to go through a twelve-step program to get them into WGS84, decimal degree format.  The MrSid images had to be converted first to .tif files (which involved converting parts of the image at a time because MrSid is a highly compressed image format and .tif is uncompressed, and the largest image Windows will handle is 2 gigabytes).  Then, I had to write the header information into the .tif image.  After that, the images could be reprojected to WGS84 decimal degree format.  Then they were clipped into one degree tiles.

Click on one of the grid squares (just the ones with land area) on the map below to download the GeoTiff image from that area.  These files are quite large (approximately 56 megabytes each--plan your drive space accordingly).  I've put them in .zip files for downloading; but it can still take some time, because even zipped they are from 12.2 to 45.5 megabytes in size.  Compressing the image to .jpg or .gif format destroys the five band color information in the image, which makes them unsuitable for analysis with ERDAS Imagine or MultiSpec.  So they have to remain in this format until I can afford a MrSid image writer (a small matter of $20,000 -- if anybody wants to pony up I'll be happy to accept your offer!).
 

Other digital data for the southern Levant can be found by following these links:

• Nima 10m resolution, orthorectified, panchromatic SPOT Satellite images
• Digital Chart of the World data, at 1:1,000,000 scale
• 1:50,000 scale topographic maps (new Arabic series)
• True color LandSat 14.25m resolution satellite images are available from the GAIA Lab.  Press the "Landsat True Color" button on that page.