SSL4EO-L: Datasets and Foundation Models for Landsat Imagery
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Abstract (arXiv)
The Landsat program is the longest-running Earth observation program in history, with 50+ years of data acquisition by 8 satellites. The multispectral imagery captured by sensors onboard these satellites is critical for a wide range of scientific fields. Despite the increasing popularity of deep learning and remote sensing, the majority of researchers still use decision trees and random forests for Landsat image analysis due to the prevalence of small labeled datasets and lack of foundation models. In this paper, we introduce SSL4EO-L, the first ever dataset designed for Self-Supervised Learning for Earth Observation for the Landsat family of satellites (including 3 sensors and 2 product levels) and the largest Landsat dataset in history (5M image patches). Additionally, we modernize and re-release the L7 Irish and L8 Biome cloud detection datasets, and introduce the first ML benchmark datasets for Landsats 4-5 TM and Landsat 7 ETM+ SR. Finally, we pre-train the first foundation models for Landsat imagery using SSL4EO-L and evaluate their performance on multiple semantic segmentation tasks. All datasets and model weights are available via the TorchGeo (https://github.com/microsoft/torchgeo) library, making reproducibility and experimentation easy, and enabling scientific advancements in the burgeoning field of remote sensing for a multitude of downstream applications.
Key facts. Cited by 49 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 22 of its 69 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 Jun 2023.
Builds on
22 of 69 references.
References · 22
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- 2022SatMAE: Pre-training Transformers for Temporal and Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagerycited by 408
- 2022Scale-MAE: A Scale-Aware Masked Autoencoder for Multiscale Geospatial Representation Learningcited by 308
- 2021Seasonal Contrast: Unsupervised Pre-Training from Uncurated Remote Sensing Datacited by 215
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- 2020Geography-Aware Self-Supervised Learningcited by 190
- 2022Self-supervised Learning in Remote Sensing: A Reviewcited by 137
- 2018Tile2Vec: Unsupervised representation learning for spatially distributed datacited by 110
- 2022An Empirical Study of Remote Sensing Pretrainingcited by 105
- 2022SSL4EO-S12: A Large-Scale Multi-Modal, Multi-Temporal Dataset for Self-Supervised Learning in Earth Observationcited by 84
- 2021TorchGeo: Deep Learning With Geospatial Datacited by 73
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 14; 2025: 21; 2026: 13.
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- 2025From Physics to Foundation Models: A Review of AI-Driven Quantitative Remote Sensing Inversion11 Jul 2025
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- 2024AnySat: One Earth Observation Model for Many Resolutions, Scales, and Modalitiescited by 74
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- 2025Towards a Unified Copernicus Foundation Model for Earth Visioncited by 53
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