stac-logo

STAC

STAC (SpatioTemporal Asset Catalogue) provides a standardised framework for organising and discovering Earth Observation (EO) data, making it easier to access imagery and metadata across diverse satellite constellations. By offering a consistent, flexible format for indexing data, STAC streamlines the process of searching and retrieving geospatial assets from multiple sources, including commercial and public satellite systems. This enables researchers, analysts, and application developers to quickly find relevant data, compare multi-source observations, and leverage time-series analysis with reduced overhead data-preparation.

Endpoint: https://catalogue.services.eodc.eu

Browse: the eodc Orbit Data Catalogue lists all collections, and the STAC Explorer lets you search and preview items on a map without writing any code.

Note

The eodc catalogue replaces the previous STAC API at https://stac.eodc.eu/api/v1. Some collection IDs differ between the two, e.g. Sentinel-1 GRD is S1_SAR_GRD in the catalogue (previously SENTINEL1_GRD). Check the list of collections for the current IDs.

→ See How to use STAC for a step-by-step guide with code examples.

Key concepts

STAC defines four building blocks for describing and exposing EO data:

  • STAC Item — the core unit. Represents a single spatio-temporal asset (e.g. one Sentinel-2 scene) with its geometry, time stamp, metadata, and links to the actual data files (GeoTIFF, Zarr, etc.).

  • STAC Collection — a group of related items sharing common metadata, such as all Sentinel-1 GRD acquisitions or the full GFM flood monitoring archive.

  • STAC Catalogue — a top-level container linking to collections and items, making the entire dataset tree browsable and machine-readable.

  • STAC API — a RESTful search interface in addition to the catalogue. Clients can query items by bounding box, time range, collection, and filter expressions (STAC Filter extension, CQL2). The eodc catalogue also supports collection search.

What the catalogue contains

The eodc catalogue brings together datasets hosted at eodc and collections from federated providers in one STAC API:

  • Hosted at eodc — e.g. Global Flood Monitoring (GFM), Sentinel-1 harmonic parameters, DestinE Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin data, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS) products, and the TOPO4EO orthophotos and elevation models for Austria.

  • Federated providers — e.g. Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (Sentinel-1, -2, -3, -5P), NASA, and ESA MAAP. Searches against these collections are forwarded to the provider, so response times depend on the upstream service.

You can find the full list of available collections at https://catalogue.services.eodc.eu/collections.

Who should use it?

  • Anyone accessing eodc data — STAC is the primary discovery and access layer for all datasets hosted at eodc. Our How-to guides serve as a good starting point.

  • Python users — pystac-client and odc-stac make it straightforward to search for data and load results directly into xarray datasets.

  • Application developers — the standardised API means eodc data can be integrated into any tool that speaks STAC (QGIS, OpenLayers, Leaflet, GDAL, etc.).

Official documentation

Using STAC with QGIS

For users who prefer a visual, desktop workflow, the eodc STAC catalogue can be accessed directly from QGIS using the STAC API Browser plugin.

Browse in eodc Orbit

Open the eodc Orbit Data Catalogue to explore available collections, or the STAC Explorer to filter items by time and spatial extent without writing any code.

Install QGIS and the STAC plugin

Download QGIS from https://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html. After installation, open Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins, search for STAC API Browser, and install it.

Install STAC plugin

Connect to the eodc STAC API

Open Plugins → STAC API Browser Plugin → Open STAC API Browser. Create a new connection (Connections → New) with the URL https://catalogue.services.eodc.eu, test it, and click OK. Press Fetch collections to load all available datasets.

Open STAC plugin New connection

Filter and load data

Select a collection, enable Filter by date and Extent, then press Search. In the results window, open View assets, check Select to add as a layer for the GeoTIFF asset, and click Add selected assets as layers.

Filter in QGIS STAC results Assets

Right-click a loaded layer and choose Zoom to Layer to centre the map on it.

Add an orthophoto basemap (Austria)

In the QGIS Browser panel, right-click WMS/WMTS → New Connection. Enter any name and the URL https://mapsneu.wien.gv.at/basemapneu/1.0.0/WMTSCapabilities.xml. The orthophoto layer becomes available after connecting.

Example datasets

Soil Sealing Identification — Open the Vegetation Change Austria collection in the STAC browser. Download the legend from Assets → Legend → Open and load the vegetation_change_bgld.tif layer. Light areas indicate vegetation detected across all survey years; red areas indicate loss.

Vegetation Change catalogue Open legend

Wet Snow — Load the Sentinel-1 Alps WetSnow collection. Pink areas in the rendered layer represent wet (melting) snow.