Through a federally funded program called South Dakota View, anyone who has a hard drive with enough memory can download satellite images of the state free. As part of the nationwide AmericaView Consortium, South Dakota View is making geospatial data available to the public. The plan is to build an archive of Landsat remote sensing data. Once Landsat satellite images are purchased, they can be shared for free. There are more than 200 images in the archive. The images, dating back to the 1970s, can be used for projects from agronomy to sociology. When compared to more recent satellite pictures, they can show urban sprawl and changes in water bodies or crop cover.
