DEA Pixel Quality Count (Landsat, DEPRECATED)
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Pixel Quality Count 25m 2.0.0 - This product is deprecated and the data no longer available 
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**Authored on**: 2017-05   
**Updated on**: 2022-09  
**License**: CC BY Attribution 4.0 International License

View the [original metadata page](https://cmi.ga.gov.au/data-products/dea/137/dea-pixel-quality-count-landsat-deprecated) for the most up-to-date information on this product.

Abstract
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We need to be able to exclude cloud and cloud shadow affected observations from analyses of optical Earth observation data.

Historically this has been done via the user selecting 'cloud free' images as input for their analysis. However, manual selection of cloud free scenes is neither timely nor practical for large scale automated analysis at continental or 'whole of archive' scale. This necessitates the use of per pixel information about whether the observation is 'clear'; i.e. free of cloud, cloud shadow and sensor saturation, and contains information for all bands.

What this product offers
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This product is a count of how many times a pixel contains a clear observation of the earth's surface (land or sea) at a particular location for a particular period of time.

It is available for the following epochs:

- **PQ-COUNT-SUMMARY**  
   Contains a count of all observations contained within the DEA (from 1987 to the most up to date imagery available)
- **PQ-COUNT-ANNUAL-SUMMARY**  
   Contains a count of the number of observations acquired in each full calendar year (1st of January - 31st December) from 1987 to the most recent full calendar year
- **PQ-COUNT-SEASONAL-SUMMARY**  
   Contains a count of the number of observations acquired within each calendar season (DJF, MAM, JJA, SON). This product is available for the most recent 8 seasons

Applications
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This product is designed to provide users of the DEA data cube with information about the number of observations available at a particular location/epoch.

This information can also be used to normalise observation counts of particular phenomena (e.g. what percentage of time a pixel meets a particular criterion during a given year).

Contacts
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For questions or more information about this product, email [DEA Support](mailto:dea@ga.gov.au?subject=Data%20Products%20support%20for%20DEA%20Pixel%20Quality%20Count%20%28Landsat%2C%20DEPRECATED%29).