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12-4. STAC in the preview

STAC layers behave like any other layer once the Explorer is running. In this exercise you will preview the configuration and watch how the different STAC layers render and respond.

Preview the configuration

  1. Click Preview to open the configuration in the Geospatial Explorer.

    The first load can take a minute

    This configuration asks every STAC collection it uses up front, so the preview can take up to a minute or so to appear. Leave the page open until the layers show up rather than reloading.

  2. Turn the STAC layers on and off from the layer menu. Each one renders like a directly-added COG or FlatGeoBuf — the Explorer resolves the real file addresses from the catalogue behind the scenes.

Watch a STAC time series

  1. Turn on Austria LST STAC items time series (or STAC time series, band 2, East Belgium).
  2. Use the time slider to step through the scenes. Each item's own date drives the timeline — the layer is a live query, so items added to the collection later would appear automatically.
  3. Compare this with Africa January 2023 and Africa June 2022: the same collection, but each layer's address carries a different date filter, so each shows a different slice.

Try the swipe comparison

  1. Turn on the Swipe test layer.
  2. Drag the swipe control to compare the June 2022 and January 2023 scenes. Both sides come from the same STAC collection; only the datetime filter in each address differs.

Styling works the same

Everything you learned in Tutorials 9 and 10 applies to STAC assets too:

  • A STAC asset that is a COG can be styled with multi-band composites and spectral indices — the Sentinel 2 STAC Query - June 2026 NDWI layer is a STAC query styled with a water index.
  • A STAC asset that is GeoJSON or FlatGeoBuf can be styled with the vector styling recipes, as on STAC Tillage simple.

The Explorer fetches a sample of the data when you open these editors, but only the STAC address and asset name are ever saved.

Export your configuration

Export your finished configuration so you can reload it later.