Offline user help · QGIS 4 · Sentinel-2A and Landsat 8/9 surface reflectance via Element 84 Earth Search & Microsoft Planetary Computer
Sentinel-2A Level-2A (12 bands, no B10) and Landsat 8/9 Collection 2 Level-2 (7 SR bands), through Element 84 Earth Search or Microsoft Planetary Computer using a shared processing pipeline.
Defaults: Sentinel-2A 10 m; Landsat 8/9 30 m. Zero means the satellite default. The dialog follows satellite changes until you enter a manual size. Saved/manual overrides are retained. A common 10 m output does not create new detail in native 20/60 m Sentinel bands.
The checklist changes to 12 or 7 bands. In Batch/Modeler, enter comma-separated codes such as B02,B03,B04,B08 or SR_B2,SR_B3,SR_B4,SR_B5; blank means all bands for that satellite.
Single scene: lowest scene-cloud candidate passing the filters. Temporal median: all passing candidates, unless exact scene IDs restrict them. The candidate cap is applied before ROI coverage filtering; this is not an exhaustive best-scene search. Use the Raster menu scene browser to preview and manually select results.
Outputs are saved with descriptive filenames (e.g. S2A_YYYYMMDD_<SceneID>_BOA_Float32.tif) with -9999 nodata. Native product names, metadata, separated performance diagnostics and masks are retained. Count/std/occurrence rasters are median outputs, not single-scene outputs. provenance.json marks completion.
| PROVIDER | STAC imagery source provider: Element 84 Earth Search (default) or Microsoft Planetary Computer. Switching provider changes only scene discovery and remote asset signing; all downstream processing is shared. |
|---|---|
| SATELLITE | Sentinel-2A only (not 2B/2C), Landsat-8, Landsat-9, or the combined Landsat 8/9 collection. The band list and automatic pixel size follow the satellite. |
| ROI | Use a polygon layer, or only its highlighted features when Selected features only is checked. Leave the extent empty. Without the checkbox, all polygon features are united as the ROI. |
| EXTENT | Alternative to a polygon ROI. Use the extent selector for the canvas, a layer or a drawn rectangle. Supply only one ROI source. |
| START | Inclusive UTC start date in YYYY-MM-DD format. |
| END | Inclusive UTC end date in YYYY-MM-DD format; must not precede the start date. |
| CLOUD | Maximum cloud percentage for the entire source scene, not a measured cloud percentage inside your ROI. |
| COVERAGE | Minimum percentage of ROI covered by a scene footprint. Coverage does not mean valid, cloud-free or water pixels. |
| RESOLUTION | Output pixel size in metres: zero = 10 m for Sentinel-2A or 30 m for Landsat. The dialog follows satellite defaults until a size is manually entered. Native 20/60 m Sentinel bands are resampled to this common grid. |
| MAX_SCENES | Maximum candidates returned before ROI coverage filtering (1–200; default 30). Narrow the dates or increase this cap if scenes are missing. |
| BANDS | Export only the checked reflectance bands. Batch/Modeler: comma-separated satellite-specific codes; blank = all. |
| MODE | Single scene chooses the lowest scene-cloud passing candidate. Median combines all passing candidates or the exact scene-ID subset, using the chunked temporal-composite processor. |
| SCENE_IDS | Optional exact STAC item IDs, separated by commas. Every ID must occur in the filtered/capped search. Single mode accepts at most one ID. |
| WATER_ONLY | Apply the original water-only mask to reflectance. Off retains the original full-ROI processing behavior. A water-mask output may still be created without masking reflectance. |
| WATER_METHOD | Single-scene method only: hybrid, classification (SCL for Sentinel / QA for Landsat), NDWI or MNDWI. Median uses the upstream hybrid/permissive calculation and consensus policy. |
| STRICT | Single-scene hybrid only: require both the classification water flag and the spectral water test. Off uses the upstream permissive rule. |
| OTSU | Single-scene spectral/hybrid water test only: estimate its threshold automatically with Otsu. Off uses the manual threshold. |
| THRESHOLD | Single-scene index threshold between -1 and 1, used only when automatic Otsu is off. It does not alter the upstream median water policy. |
| OUTPUT | Destination directory, not a raster filename. A unique SpectralHarbor run subfolder keeps the native products and metadata. |
| LOAD_OUTPUT | Add the descriptive reflectance raster to the QGIS map and Layers panel after success (default on). No map loading occurs in a headless context without a project. |
Read the included full guide, architecture and dependencies, citations and data attribution, source licensing, changelog and validation report.
Spectral Harbor is a standalone QGIS 4 plugin for downloading selected surface-reflectance bands from Sentinel-2A Level-2A and Landsat 8/9 Collection 2 Level-2 through Element 84 Earth Search or Microsoft Planetary Computer using a shared scientific processing pipeline.
Developed by Mohamed Aly Nasef. License: GPL-3.0-or-later, with third-party notices included in the distribution.