Sentinel-2 Imagery: NDMI Colorized

Retirement Notice: This item is currently in beta and will be retired in December 2026.  A replacement item has not been identified at this time. It is not recommended for production use, as functionality and content are subject to change without notice.

Sentinel-2, 10 and 20m Multispectral 13-band imagery, rendered on-the-fly. Available for visualization and analytics, this Imagery Layer pulls directly from the Sentinel-2 on AWS collection and is updated daily with new imagery.

This imagery layer can be used for multiple purposes including but not limited to vegetation, land cover and environmental monitoring.

Geographic Coverage

• Global
• Continental land masses from 65.4° South to 72.1° North, with these special guidelines:
  • All coastal waters up to 20 km from the shore
  • All islands greater than 100 km2
  • All EU islands
  • All closed seas (e.g. Caspian Sea)
  • The Mediterranean Sea
  • Note: Areas of interest going beyond the Mission baseline (as laid out in the Mission Requirements Document) will be assessed, and may be added to the baseline if sufficient resources are identified.

Temporal Coverage

• The revisit time for each point on Earth is every 5 days.
• This layer is updated daily with new imagery.
• This imagery layer is designed to include imagery collected within the past 14 months.  Custom Image Services can be created for access to images older than 14 months.
• The number of images available will vary depending on location.

Image Selection/Filtering

• The most recent and cloud free image, for any location, is displayed by default.
• Any image available, within the past 14 months, can be displayed via custom filtering.
• Filtering can be done based on Acquisition Date, Estimated Cloud Cover, and Tile ID.
• Tile_ID is computed as [year][month][day]T[hours][minutes][seconds]_[UTMcode][latitudeband][square]_[sequence]. More…
  • NOTE:  Not using filters, and loading the entire archive, may affect performance.

Analysis Ready

• This imagery layer is analysis ready with TOA correction applied.
   

Visual Rendering

• Default rendering is NDMI Colorized (Normalized Difference Moisture Index with colormap) computed as NIR(B8)-SWIR1(B11)/NIR(B8)+SWIR1(B11)
• Wetlands and moist areas appear blue whereas dry areas are represented by deep yellow and brown color.
• Rendering (or display) of band combinations and calculated indices is done on-the-fly from the source images via Raster Functions.
• Various pre-defined Raster Functions can be selected or custom functions created.
• Available renderings include: Agriculture with DRA, Bathymetric with DRA, Color-Infrared with DRA, Natural Color with DRA, Short-wave Infrared with DRA, Geology with DRA, Normalized Difference Built-Up Index (NDBI), NDWI Raw, NDWI - with VRE Raw, NDVI – with VRE Raw (NDRE), NDVI - VRE only Raw, NDVI Raw, Normalized Burn Ratio, NDVI Colormap.

Multispectral Bands

Band

Description

Wavelength (µm)

Resolution (m)

1

Coastal aerosol

0.433 - 0.453

60

2

Blue

0.458 - 0.523

10

3

Green

0.543 - 0.578

10

4

Red

0.650 - 0.680

10

5

Vegetation Red Edge

0.698 - 0.713

20

6

Vegetation Red Edge

0.733 - 0.748

20

7

Vegetation Red Edge

0.773 - 0.793

20

8

NIR

0.785 - 0.900

10

8A

Narrow NIR

0.855 - 0.875

20

9

Water vapour

0.935 - 0.955

60

10

SWIR – Cirrus

1.365 - 1.385

60

11

SWIR-1

1.565 - 1.655

20

12

SWIR-2

2.100 - 2.280

20

Additional Notes

• Overviews exist with a spatial resolution of 150m and are updated every quarter based on the best and latest imagery available at that time.
• To work with source images at all scales, the ‘Lock Raster’ functionality is available.
  • NOTE:  ‘Lock Raster’ should only be used on the layer for short periods of time, as the imagery and associated record Object IDs may change daily.
• This ArcGIS Server dynamic imagery layer can be used in Web Maps and ArcGIS Desktop as well as Web and Mobile applications using the REST based Image services API.
• Images can be exported up to a maximum of 4,000 columns x 4,000 rows per request.

Data Source

Sentinel-2 imagery is the result of close collaboration between the (European Space Agency) ESA, the European Commission and USGS. Data is hosted by the Amazon Web Services as part of their Registry of Open Data. Users can access the imagery from Sentinel-2 on AWS , EarthExplorer or the Copernicus Open Access Hub to download the scenes.