The social science community has given increasing attention to the analysis of multitemporal satellite images in human dimensions of environmental change research. This article provides an overview of how image-processing techniques, such as radiometric calibration and spectral mixture analysis, can be applied. The application of these techniques is vital if the social science community wishes to develop a robust research program that allows the accurate comparison of distant but similar locations. Furthermore, by mapping the institutional landscape, the article demonstrates how social scientists can begin to understand landscape change by carefully relating human incentives to actions and actions to outcomes as measured by a set of multitemporal satellite images.