STAC in QGIS

QGIS is a powerful and popular geographic information system software that can natively access STAC since version 3.44.

Here is a step-by-step tutorial to perform the following:

• Generate an API key
• Set the API key in QGIS
• Configure a new STAC endpoint for the CDS MTD in QGIS

Generate an API key

To use the STAC Browser plugin in QGIS, you must first create an API key.

• Open this link in your web browser
• Click on “Generate an API key”
• Copy the access-key and secret-key

(Note that you could also use the command line to generate a new API key: follow these instructions)

Set your API key in QGIS

Once the API key is created, you have to set these credentials to the QGIS authentication framework.

1. In QGIS, go to Preferences > Options
2. Select Authentication tab on the left pannel
3. If it has not been done, you must set a general password for QGIS authentication framework.
4. Click on “+”, on the top-right of the panel
5. Select API header, set a name (e.g. CDS THEIA MTD Auth) and optionally a description
6. Use the “+” button on the top-right side of the table, to add the following keys/values:

• key: access-key, enter the access key you have copied
• key: secret-key, enter the secret key you have copied

Configure a new STAC endpoint for the CDS MTD in QGIS

1. From the Explorer left pannel, right clic and select New STAC connection, as shown in the figure below (Note that you can access this with the menu).

2. Set the following:

    name: CDG-MTD
    url: https://qgis.stac.teledetection.fr
    authentication: select the authentication method that you have created previously (e.g. `CDS THEIA MTD Auth`)

Now you can play with the CDS-MTD STAC API! 🚀

Additional information

You can read this tutorial (in french!) that explains these steps and how to access the data, perform searches, filter using geospatial or temporal extent, etc.