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12. STAC as a data source

Tutorial Objectives

Satellite basemap of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East with colour-styled STAC item footprints scattered across it

Many Earth Observation projects publish their results through a STAC (SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog) catalogue. As well as browsing a STAC catalogue to discover data, the Geospatial Explorer can use a STAC collection, item or query directly as a data source. In this tutorial you will load a prepared configuration of STAC layers and inspect how they are defined and how they behave.

By the end of this tutorial you will be able to:

  • Explain what STAC is and how catalogues, collections, items and assets relate.
  • Describe the difference between STAC as a discovery service and STAC as a data source.
  • Recognise a STAC data source on a layer card.
  • Inspect STAC collection, item, asset and queryable metadata.
  • Understand how area, date and property filters become part of a STAC query.
  • Describe how STAC layers behave in the preview, including time series.

Steps