Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. Dublin is in the province of Leinster on Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey. The city has an urban area population of 1,345,402. The population of the Greater Dublin Area, as of 2011, was 1,801,040 people.

Founded as a Viking settlement, the Kingdom of Dublin became Ireland's principal city following the Norman invasion. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century and was briefly the second largest city in the British Empire before the Acts of Union in 1800. Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, Dublin became the capital of the Irish Free State, later renamed Ireland.

Dublin is administered by a City Council. The city is listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) as a global city, with a ranking of "Alpha-", placing it among the top thirty cities in the world. It is a historical and contemporary centre for education, the arts, administration, economy and industry.


More information is available on Wikipedia

Today our Landsat image comparison is focused over the major city of Dublin, in County Dublin, Leinster Province. Dublin is Ireland's administrative, commercial, and trading hub, as well as its main centre of education and culture. Dublin is situated in eastern-central Ireland, on the coast facing the Irish Sea, at the head of a large crescent-shaped bay that is sheltered on its southern side by the Wicklow Mountains. The city occupies a generally flat site, which is bisected from west to east by the River Liffey. The images acquired with a temporal window of twenty-six years (before/after), and taken as comparision show as the city and the area around, specially in the west side it has grown during these time window.

Another aim of these images is to promote the opportunity to download Landsat data through the ESA portals, where images captured every day are made available in near real time to the users and the scientific community.

Landsat full resolution data products are freely available for immediate download at:

• LANDSAT-8 portal
• LANDSAT 1-7 portal

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View Landsat 5 TM high resolution image (JPG 2.5 MB)

View Landsat 8 OLI high resolution image (JPG 3.0 MB)