How Governments Track Changing Land Use With Planet Near-Daily Satellite Imagery

Learn how Planet satellite imagery allows agencies to identify and track land use changes at scale.

Governments worldwide face the daunting task of tracking land use changes, such as sprawling urban development, shifts in agricultural practices, and criminal misuse of protected areas. Traditional monitoring methods struggle to keep up with the modern pace of change, especially when covering large or remote areas. This is where high-frequency satellite imagery becomes an invaluable resource.

Planet constellations of Earth imaging satellites capture fresh data every day to monitor land use across large areas and track fast-moving developments as they unfold. Governments around the world use this data to understand land use and ensure compliance with a range of codes and mandates. By providing timely data, satellite technology allows agencies to track land use changes with unprecedented accuracy and act quickly when issues arise.

Understanding Changing Land Use

Human activities, like agriculture and industrialization, inevitably alter local Earth surface processes and ecosystems. Land use affects public health and safety, food security, and, ultimately, a nation’s future well-being. Government agencies manage land use to ensure it benefits society, while protecting natural resources for future generations.

Accurate and timely land use data is essential for sustainable planning, environmental conservation, policy-making, and regulatory compliance. But traditional methods of land use tracking are often slow, expensive, and labor-intensive, and the data may be outdated by the time it is processed.

Traditional Methods

Traditional land use monitoring methods include:

• Periodic surveys: Fieldwork conducted at regular intervals to gather data. 
  
• Aerial photography: Images captured from aircraft or drones.
  
• Ground inspections: On-site visits to observe and record land use changes.

While these methods can still be helpful when paired with satellite data, they have limitations when used alone. For example, due to cost and effort, governments typically conduct periodic surveys slowly and infrequently, often missing rapid land use changes. Aerial photography is limited by flight frequency and weather conditions, and ground inspections are exceedingly labor-intensive and time-consuming. Government officials need a more efficient and cost-effective way to monitor large areas. 

High-Frequency Satellite Imagery

Governments, agribusinesses, and others increasingly rely on satellite imagery to monitor and measure changes across large geographic areas and timescales. Satellite imagery technology uses satellites in orbit to obtain detailed, timely images of the Earth’s surface.

This Earth observation (EO) data overcomes the limitations of traditional methods by providing high-resolution, frequent data across vast areas. Unlike other approaches to land use monitoring, satellite imagery has the potential to offer comprehensive coverage.

PlanetScope^® Monitoring, Planet’s high-frequency satellite imagery, gives agencies a comprehensive view of land use changes to support better land management decisions.

Planet Analytics leverage machine learning to detect objects like roads, buildings, ships, and aircraft — transforming imagery into actionable information feeds. When combined with PlanetScope Monitoring and Archive data, these products can detect change over broad areas and timescales. Government agencies, their partners, and other organizations use these Planet technologies to detect early threats, mitigate risks, ensure regulatory compliance, and improve disaster preparedness.

Use Cases and Applications

Governments and other entities can use daily satellite technology to improve natural resource management and land use compliance in many ways.

Let’s run through several common use cases:

• Agriculture compliance: Regular and comprehensive updates across farmland help governments track, detect, and measure land use change. This valuable information enables governments to monitor compliance, administer subsidy programs, and schedule inspections more efficiently. Governments can even use this data to verify that farmers carry out management practices, including conservation tillage and cover cropping. 
  
  
• Fraud prevention: In Odisha, India, high frequency satellite imagery and crop analysis play an important role in combating food insecurity and farmer fraud. The city’s Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department uses this enhanced visibility to identify false or inflated reporting, which minimizes misallocated and misused government funds. The department also uses satellite data to direct resources where needed most. 
  
  
• Precision agriculture: Farmers and agricultural companies use satellite images to monitor crop health, assess soil conditions, and manage irrigation to increase yields and reduce resource wastage.
  
  
• Urban development: Many cities use satellite imagery to monitor and manage growth effectively. For example, the city of Wroclaw in Poland utilizes daily PlanetScope satellite data to detect and track property changes to levy and collect the correct taxes. The program promptly alerts city authorities to new buildings and other relevant urban land use changes.
  
  
• Deforestation monitoring: Governments and land resource managers also utilize satellite technology to document deforestation, disease, global land cover, and forest health. A good example is a global forest sector consultant, Indufor, which leverages Planet imagery to continuously scan for forest and vegetation changes to understand a given area’s productivity and health.
  
  
• Illegal activity detection: Planet satellite imagery has also been instrumental in detecting illegal logging, land conversion, and other illicit operations in the Amazon rainforest. Environmental agencies and authorities analyze the data to pinpoint where these activities occur, facilitating targeted inspections and more effective enforcement. This approach has helped reduce forest management fraud and deforestation rates.

Benefits of Daily Satellite Imagery for Land Use Tracking

With hundreds of satellites in orbit, satellite imagery is simply more scalable than aerial photography or ground data. Daily images make it possible to detect changes quickly, improving reaction time for critical planning decisions. This combination of better accuracy and faster data collection makes it easier for government agencies to check that developments and activities comply with zoning laws, legal standards, and environmental regulations.

Furthermore, Planet gives urban planners and policymakers access to multi-dimensional Earth data to support more efficient infrastructure planning, zoning, and resource allocation, reducing costly errors and delays. Using satellite imagery for land use tracking delivers tangible benefits at every level:

• Environmental and economic benefits: Promoting sustainable development, improving environmental law enforcement, and ensuring regulatory compliance.
  
• Bureaucratic benefits: Reducing the need for manual surveys streamlines operations, minimizes labor costs, and helps organizations make data-driven decisions more efficiently.
  
• Local government benefits: Timely data helps city and town officials respond more quickly to changes, improving zoning oversight, infrastructure projects, and disaster management.
  
• National government benefits: Earth observation data supports long-term economic growth by making it easier to enforce policies and regulations, track agricultural productivity, and manage natural resources.

Transform Land Use Management With Near-Real-Time Satellite Imagery

In the past, national and civil government agencies, businesses, and other key stakeholders often made important decisions based on outdated land use information. Gathering the necessary data was time-consuming and slow, impeding officials’ ability to make informed decisions quickly.

Today, Planet satellite imagery has transformed the entire information-gathering process. With broad area management, government officials, researchers, urban planners, and environmentalists can now access multi-layered data at a moment’s notice, allowing them to identify and act on changing land use quickly.

With this critical information, governments can better enforce laws and regulations, monitor natural disasters, track deforestation, manage urban development, and anticipate agricultural needs. As satellite technology advances, the insights gained from real-time imagery will become even more integral to the decision-making processes of organizations and governments worldwide.

To harness the power of Planet’s real-time satellite imagery to transform your organization or government’s decision-making, contact us today.