Image processing of Sentinel-1 SAR (S-1) and Sentinel-2 multispectral (MSI) (S-2) data for applications in landscape archaeology

This tutorial is aimed at providing the user with knowledge and practical skills on satellite image acquisition, pre-processing and export for purposes within landscape archaeology. The methodological steps might vary depending on the satellite sensor. The processing steps described in this tutorial are developed and showcased for two satellite types that are actively run by the European Space Agency (ESA), i.e., Sentinel-1 (SAR) and Sentinel-2 (MSI). The tutorial makes use of ESA’s Sentinels Application Platform SNAP toolbox. All data and software are free of charge. After completing this tutorial, the user should be able to find, download and pre-process spaceborne SAR and multispectral data from two popular Earth Observation satellites. The user should have gained some basic understanding of the steps needed to prepare satellite data for analysis, have attained some familiarity with SNAP and should be able to produce a GeotTIFF image that can further be used for landscape archaeological applications, e.g., visual image interpretation, image classification, derivation of a variety of indices or change detection.

This tutorial is part of a group of tutorials focused on landscape analysis, integrating digital methods to study and interpret archaeological landscapes. All tutorials can be found on the DARKLab website and are created within the Swedish National Infrastructure for Digital Archaeology (Swedigarch). Explore more at the Swedigarch website.