Tanager-1 is made possible by the Carbon Mapper Coalition, a philanthropically-funded effort to develop and deploy satellites designed to detect and track methane and CO2 super-emitters at a level of granularity needed to support direct mitigation action. Tanager-1 combines Planet’s cutting-edge agile aerospace and smallsat bus technology with the state-of-the-art imaging spectrometer design developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

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PUBLISHED ARTICLE FROM CARBON MAPPER

Pasadena, Calif., Oct. 10, 2024 — Today, Carbon Mapper released the first methane and carbon dioxide (CO2) detections by the Tanager-1 satellite. This is the culmination of years of effort from a public-private partnership, funded by philanthropy, to make emissions data available globally and actionable on a local scale. These observations are a preview of what’s to come as Carbon Mapper will leverage Tanager-1 to scale-up emissions observations at unprecedented sensitivity across large areas. Data at this level of granularity can empower enhanced transparency and guide mitigation actions that benefit our climate.

This milestone was achieved quickly, in just over one month since Tanager-1 launched on August 16. This is the first of a series of satellites being developed through a unique coalition which is led by Carbon Mapper in partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Planet Labs PBC. Other coalition members include RMI and Arizona State University alongside philanthropic supporters including High Tide Foundation, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and Zegar Family Foundation among others.

Building on aerial surveys conducted since 2016, Carbon Mapper researchers have been refining the algorithms and processes necessary to pinpoint and quantify super-emitting sources of methane and CO2 quickly. Through these regional pilot surveys, Carbon Mapper found that nearly half of super-emitting events (sources that emit > 100 kg CH4/h) flagged for state agencies and operators were previously unknown, and once identified were able to be mitigated. These efforts laid the groundwork for Carbon Mapper’s work with partners to translate this granular data into concrete mitigation action.

“Detecting and quantifying methane and carbon dioxide detections so quickly with Tanager-1 is a testament to the unique partnership we established. I’m so proud of this outcome after all the hard work by our coalition,” said Carbon Mapper CEO Riley Duren. “This milestone is made possible by the support of our donors who have invested in the satellite technology, science, data platform, engagement program — and most importantly, the team. These first detections are just the beginning; we are on track to routinely publish high-quality emissions data from Tanager-1 in the near future.”

“To meet ambitious climate goals, it is important for philanthropy to lead carefully and follow fast. This is exactly what we have done with our investment in the Carbon Mapper coalition. We were methodical in how we built an emissions monitoring program to drive transparency and actionable emissions insights, and we have delivered,” said Richard Lawrence, Founder and Executive Chairman of High Tide Foundation. “Now is the time to quickly scale up investments to get this data into the right hands so we can accelerate global actions to cut methane and CO2.”

To make this data accessible and actionable, Carbon Mapper makes all of its methane and CO2 detections publicly available for noncommercial use on its data portal, a web platform that is updated on an ongoing basis with observations and emissions data from remote sensing sources.

“Reducing methane pollution starts with measuring it,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions and Founder of Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies. “Data from the Tanager-1 satellite is providing us with the real-time data necessary to pinpoint methane leaks at their source and clean them up. This new technology is crucial to curbing emissions from one of the biggest contributors to climate change.”

Emissions data from Carbon Mapper alongside data from other monitoring programs will be critical to helping governments deliver on the Global Methane Pledge, an unprecedented agreement led by the United States and the European Union to reduce global methane emissions by 30% by 2030. It can also be transformative across major emitting sectors such as energy, waste and agriculture, empowering companies to identify and verify emissions reductions across their supply chains and deliver on stated commitments such as the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter.

Tanager-1 is currently undergoing commissioning by Planet and Carbon Mapper, which includes performing calibration and validation of key systems and data platforms, in addition to other routine spacecraft maneuvering. Once commissioning is completed in the coming months, Carbon Mapper will continue to scale up its observations and make methane and CO2 data routinely accessible to help decision makers fill gaps in their understanding of the exact sources of emissions and empower mitigation action at the source.

By Christopher Anderson, Amy Rosenthal, and Flávia de Souza Mendes.

Today, Amazon Conservation released the first in a series of three Mapping the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) reports on forest carbon across the Amazon that leverages our Forest Carbon Diligence product. The reports reveal patterns of aboveground carbon dynamics, including where and how much aboveground carbon has been lost – and gained – in the Amazon biome over the past 10 years.

Notably, this first report (MAAP report #215) estimates the biome’s total aboveground forest carbon at about 56.8 billion metric tons, and suggests that Earth’s most critical forest remains a carbon sink – though just barely. With the Amazon on the cusp, effective and timely action is urgently required to safeguard a globally important carbon sink and forestall a flip into a net carbon emissions source.

As will be expected by longtime readers, like we are, the findings both substantiate the best scientific understanding of trends and also identify some notable surprises, which we’ll dive into below. Together, these conclusions indicate key opportunities for conservation, reason for hope, and actionable insights to forestall forest emissions.

You can find these reports on the MAAP website, where you can sign up to have future MAAP alerts delivered to your inbox. We’re big fans of the data-driven environmental reporting produced by their team, and we highly recommend the read.

The Planet team was thrilled to work with Amazon Conservation on these summary reports. In this companion post, we aim to complement the reports with an explainer about how and why these insights came to light with the Forest Carbon Diligence datasets and to provide scientific guidance regarding how to evaluate the quality and veracity of these results.

First we’ll share a few of our big takeaways from the first MAAP report (#215), followed by a series of FAQs raised by these findings: 

1. As of 2022, total aboveground forest carbon in the Amazon biome can be estimated at about 56.8 billion metric tons. This is right in between the lower and upper estimates found in the scientific literature.
2. That’s 64.7 million metric tons more than in 2013, making the Amazon a carbon sink over the last decade – not a net source of carbon emissions. That’s a very small buffer, however, and there’s reason to worry that the biome could flip from sink to source with ongoing deforestation.
3. High carbon density – or the amount of aboveground carbon per hectare – is found across the Amazon, but there are peak carbon levels in two geographically distant extremes: the southwestern Amazon including southeastern Peru and adjacent Brazil and eastern Guiana Shield including northeastern Brazil, French Guiana, and southeastern Suriname. This is notable, given how much higher the carbon density is, highlighting the outsized importance that targeted conservation could play. 
4. From 2013 to 2022, we see an increase in average carbon density in mature forests, particularly in the Guiana Shield countries of French Guiana, Suriname, and Guyana. This result challenges some conventional wisdom about ‘saturation,’ in which old growth forests are assumed to reach a point where carbon sequestration is balanced by carbon losses from respiration and decomposition. These results indicate that intact forests continue to accumulate carbon, increasing aboveground forest carbon over time, and that these effects are measurable.

What is Forest Carbon Diligence?

Planet’s Forest Carbon Diligence products quantify—globally and annually—how much carbon is stored in trees, the area occupied by trees, and how tall they are. This is done using cutting-edge machine learning models that fuse historical satellite observations with high quality, laser-derived reference data. Model benchmarks include an extensive archive of high resolution airborne LiDAR data for the canopy height and canopy cover models, and a global carbon dataset derived from the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI), a NASA satellite mission. This product builds on decades of open data and open science, and was designed to maximize accuracy, transparency, and trust based on well-known standards.

You can think of Diligence as a multi-year, GEDI-like forest carbon data product with wall-to-wall spatial coverage. It includes historical time series data since 2013 with numerical estimates for aboveground carbon density, canopy height, and canopy cover at 30-meter nominal resolution. It provides pixel-level uncertainty data, QA data, and day-of-measurement data. You can read more about Diligence in the product’s Technical Specifications.

How do Forest Carbon Diligence carbon density results relate to the peer-reviewed literature?

The first MAAP report estimates that the Amazon biome contains 56.8 billion metric tons of aboveground carbon. That’s a big, mind-boggling number. Even bigger when we Americans convert it to pounds (lbs), which translates to over 125 trillion lbs of carbon. For perspective, that would be roughly equivalent to the biomass of 9 billion African elephants! And for additional perspective on that point, the total population of African elephants is only about 415,000, down from about 10 million in 1930, per a WWF report.

But those weren’t the comparisons you were asking about. How does the Diligence estimate compare to other peer-reviewed estimates of carbon stocks?

The best source for globally evaluating how Diligence compares to other peer-reviewed datasets is the Diligence Validation and Intercomparison Report, which we described in a previous Planet Pulse post. But we’ll need to look elsewhere for Amazon-specific comparisons. Here are a few we could track down, with the caveat that the boundary definitions for the Amazon biome (analyzed by MAAP) and the Amazon biome (analyzed by others) may not exactly match.

Gatti et al. (2023) recently published an excellent paper on how carbon emissions from land use change in the Amazon have shifted as a result of decreased law enforcement activities, particularly in the western Amazon. Their carbon data appears to cite Saatchi et al. (2007), who published carbon stock estimates for the year 2000. After adjusting some numbers—converting the biomass-to-carbon scalar from 0.5 to 0.48 to ensure consistency between datasets—Saatchi et al. estimated the total carbon stocks in the Amazon basin to be between 56.0 and 69.3 billion metric tons (Pg). Diligence estimates 56.8 Pg for the year 2022, which follows around 20 years of deforestation in the region. This seems to be a reasonable level of agreement.

Ometto et al. (2023) separately developed estimates of carbon density across the Brazilian Amazon, derived from fusing airborne LiDAR, field plots, and satellite data. They estimate average aboveground biomass density in the Amazon basin to be 174 metric tons per hectare (Mg/ha) or, converted to carbon density, 83.5 Mg/ha. Diligence estimates are lower than Ometto et al. Why is there misalignment? Both methods estimate carbon from forest structure data, but each does so with a different approach. Diligence uses GEDI as a reference dataset, while Ometto et al. uses regional allometry. Regionally calibrated estimates usually provide finer, local-scale calibration, but the field-to-LiDAR fits in this case appear to be very noisy, and we can’t speak to the level of agreement between these results and other independent datasets.

What about other sources that could provide a standard reference, like National Forest Inventory data? Figure 1, sourced from a prior analysis, compares aboveground biomass density and total biomass estimates to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and GEDI across all of Brazil. We found strong agreement between Diligence and GEDI across Brazil, including an r-squared score of 0.84. Diligence estimates are right between the national-scale estimates from FAO and GEDI. Analytically, we typically feel good about estimates that land between multiple independent results, which is the case here. More country-level GEDI/FAO comparisons are provided in Section 8 of the validation report, and Diligence does not appear to be systematically higher or lower than either source.

How confident are we in the finding that the Amazon biome remains a carbon sink? 

Determining whether the Amazon is a net source or a net sink of CO₂ has been an active research topic for the past few years. Making the transition from sink to source could mark a critical tipping point, where feedback loops between deforestation, drought, and fire would lead to progressively slower rates of carbon sequestration and evapotranspiration, and eventually towards large-scale turnover in species communities (Lovejoy and Nobre, 2018, Silvério et al. 2013).

So the finding from MAAP that the Amazon remains a net carbon sink is reason for cautious optimism, even while forest loss in the region has remained high over the past decade (World Resources Institute, 2024). Are these results consistent with other studies?

Two important papers provide evidence on both sides of the debate. Baccini et al. (2017) published one of the first studies to provide evidence via remote sensing that the tropics had transitioned to become a net carbon source. They modeled carbon stocks using 500-meter (m) resolution MODIS data, then fit time series trends to identify whether a pixel experienced loss, gain, or no change. The next paper is from Harris et al. (2021), who reported that both Brazil and the South American tropics overall remain a net carbon sink, using 30m Landsat data. Table 1 and Figure 2 from the Harris et al. paper are worth your attention.

What’s the difference between these papers? It’s mostly in how carbon gain gets estimated.

• Harris et al. used process-based carbon sequestration models, which are not satellite-based, but should give good estimates on average.
• Baccini et al. used a statistical smoothing process to denoise the signal over time, which may minimize small changes in forest growth while being more sensitive to forest loss.

We won’t pick a side between the two, which are both excellent, innovative contributions to the field. But our results represent another contribution to the discussion, which lands pretty much right in between the papers cited above. MAAP found the Amazon is a net sink—by a small margin of just +64 million metric tons. Relative to the total estimate of 56.8 billion metric tons (Pg), net positive change is around +0.1%. To end up between the extremes of two sides of the debate seems a reasonable place to land.

What makes the Forest Carbon Diligence approach different is that no assumptions are made about growth rates, minimal time series smoothing is applied, and the maps are derived from multiple 30m resolution satellite datasets. Also, the shifts in carbon storage are directly attributed to estimated changes in canopy height and canopy cover. This is opposed to trying to estimate carbon stocks directly from optical data, which can be troublesome (Ploton et al. 2020).

We interpret these results to suggest that, while deforestation and forest degradation are major drivers of carbon emissions across the Amazon, it appears that—in addition to gains from tree cover expansion—increases in carbon accumulation in low-disturbance landscapes might offset these effects, which can be detected via small increases in canopy height and canopy cover.

With the Amazon approaching a tipping point, it’s not clear how much longer we can expect the benefits of these carbon sink dynamics to last, especially with total forested area shrinking over time. These patterns reinforce the critical importance of conservation and stewardship in the region’s remaining forests, especially the recognition and protection of land tenure rights in Indigenous lands (Prioli Duarte et al. 2023).

Is carbon density increasing in the Amazon, as Forest Carbon Diligence estimates?

Interpreting aggregate carbon density numbers is a tricky endeavor, so let’s break down what they mean. Decreases in carbon density are primarily driven by forest loss via deforestation, selective logging, or natural disturbance. Increases in carbon density are observed where forests regrow or where existing forests continue to sequester and store carbon, which may be expressed through increases in canopy cover and canopy height.

The MAAP report quantifies shifts in average carbon density across the countries in the Amazon basin. Whether carbon density increases or decreases on average is a reflection of the balance between the drivers of loss and the drivers of gain. One remarkable trend here is the increase in carbon density in French Guiana and Suriname, with the highest and second-highest average carbon density in the Amazon, respectively. These countries are designated as high forest, low deforestation (HFLD), indicating the majority of forested areas are intact, mature forests. Potapov et al. (2017) and Global Forest Watch characterize much of these countries’ forest regions as Intact Forest Landscapes. Minimizing deforestation in these regions could have a disproportionately positive impact on increasing carbon stocks. Is there corroborating evidence showing similar increases in carbon density across the region? Do intact forests continue to sequester and store carbon, or have they ‘saturated’ and reached a steady-state equilibrium?

Pan et al. (2024) provides the most contemporary evidence of net increases in carbon density in mature forests, in both intact tropical forests and in regrowing tropical forests, which builds on earlier work by Pan et al. (2011). The rates of carbon uptake in tropical forests are decreasing relative to sequestration rates in the 1990s when intact forests made up a larger portion of total forest area, but remain net positive overall.

What about evidence from the field? Duque et al. (2023) analyzed trends in the intact montane forests of the Andes, finding strong, persistent net increases in carbon density over an 11-year period. The authors suggest that “[their] results indicate that the Andes are similar to other tropical forests in that they are acting as aboveground carbon sinks, but the overall relative strength of the Andean carbon sink (1.01% annually) is even stronger than that of mature lowland tropical forests in Amazonia, Africa, or southeast Asia.”

Based on long-term field plots from the RAINFOR network, Phillips and Brienen (2017) found that intact forests in the Amazon have sequestered enough carbon to offset both land-based emissions and national fossil fuel emissions. The synthesis provided in this work is truly remarkable, summarizing decades of plot measurements from hundreds of sites throughout the region:

The sink of carbon into mature forests has been remarkably geographically ubiquitous across Amazonia, being substantial and persistent in each of the five biogeographic regions within Amazonia. Between 1980 and 2010, it has more than mitigated the fossil fuel emissions of every single national economy… While the sink has weakened in some regions since 2000, our analysis suggests that Amazon nations which are able to conserve large areas of natural and semi-natural landscape still contribute globally-significant carbon sequestration.

These studies are all consistent with the results reported by MAAP. Planet developed the Forest Carbon Diligence product to provide these sorts of detailed, broad-scale insights into a dynamic carbon balance at local, regional, and global levels, anywhere in the world. But such a product requires a strong linkage to fundamental ecological research, like the field studies above. Satellite-derived products should be analyzed as a complement to, not a replacement for, such work.

How do we characterize uncertainty around Forest Carbon Diligence results in the Amazon?

Diligence provides pixel-level uncertainty quantification, estimated independently for canopy height, canopy cover, and aboveground carbon density. Users can draw on these pixel-level uncertainties to derive their own project-level estimates. Pre-computed estimates of total carbon uncertainty at project, biome, or country levels are not currently provided. 

Users will need to make certain assumptions to develop their own aggregate uncertainty estimates. The crux is that one must know the spatial covariance among pixels if aggregating within a year, and potentially the spatiotemporal covariance if aggregating across both pixels and years. The covariance parameters may also be uncertain. Estimating spatial covariance often requires specifying a parametric model, which necessitates domain expertise specific to regions and forest types, and is computationally intensive. There are many different approaches to this kind of estimation, and the Forest Carbon Diligence products provide the raw materials required—robust, well-calibrated, distribution-free pixel-level uncertainties—for users to make decisions that are appropriate for their needs.

Fortunately, it is much more straightforward to estimate the total carbon over an area, which can be computed simply by summing the expected values for each pixel and then adjusting for area to get pixel-level MgC values.

To get a sense for the relative amount of uncertainty between Diligence and other datasets, we recommend reading more in Section 2 of the validation report. This section shows spatially-explicit maps of agreement among data sources, showing particularly strong agreement between Diligence and GEDI in the Amazon.

Where does training data come from for Forest Carbon Diligence, and is there any from the Amazon?

Diligence models were trained using publicly available data sourced over the last decade. The Planet team has developed an unparalleled data catalog of global, high resolution airborne LiDAR data, which was used for model training. This included hundreds of individual LiDAR sites across the Amazon basin and the Neotropics. Airborne LiDAR data were used to model canopy height and canopy cover. To estimate carbon density, we leveraged GEDI, a spaceborne LiDAR mission, which provides more than 5 years of large-footprint observations across the region. As a result, we observe some of the strongest agreement between Diligence and other independent data sources in the region.

These MAAP reports, drawing on Forest Carbon Diligence, explore the nuanced dynamics of forest carbon in the Amazon. There’s no single story or trend that encapsulates the complexity and dynamism of this system. But with time series tracking of forest canopy and forest cover, we can get closer to actionable insights across the dominant trends that influence biome’s health overall – including its provision of crucial ecosystem services for local communities, the countries they inhabit, and everyone who lives under our shared sky. 

For forest carbon in the Amazon, not all locations are equal. These MAAP analyses show that mature forests continue to accumulate carbon over time. This points to the importance of safeguarding these biodiversity-rich, old growth forests to preserve the Amazon’s carbon sink, alongside efforts to avoid further frontier forest losses and reforest what’s been lost. The stability of Earth will be determined by our ability to understand its changing surface and intervene where necessary. MAAP report #215 reveals cutting-edge and actionable information to underpin data-driven conservation in the Amazon. Its overall message is simple: there’s no time to lose.

Forward-looking Statements

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this blog post (including statements related to the Company in the third party blog post reproduced below) are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, the Company’s ability to successfully design, build, launch and deploy, operate and market new products and satellites and the Company’s ability to realize any of the potential benefits from product and satellite launches, either as designed, within the expected time frame, in a cost-effective manner, or at all. Forward-looking statements are based on the Company’s management’s beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to them. Because such statements are based on expectations as to future events and results and are not statements of fact, actual results may differ materially from those projected. Factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to: the Company’s ability to obtain and maintain required licenses and approvals from regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in a timely fashion, or at all; whether the Company will be able to successfully build, launch and deploy or operate its satellites, including new satellites either as designed, in a timely fashion or at all; the Company’s ability to develop and release product and service enhancements to respond to rapid technological change, or to develop new designs and technologies for its satellites, in a timely and cost-effective manner; whether the Company will be able to continue to invest in scaling its sales organization, expanding its software engineering (including its ability to integrate new satellite capabilities) and marketing capabilities; whether the Company will be able to accurately predict and capture market opportunity; whether current customers or prospective customers adopt the Company’s platform or new products; the Company’s ability realize any of the potential benefits from new products and satellites, as well as strategic partnerships and customer collaborations; and the risk factors and other disclosures about the Company and its business included in the Company’s periodic reports, proxy statements, and other disclosure materials filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which are available online at www.sec.gov, and on the Company’s website at www.planet.com. All forward-looking statements reflect the Company’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date such statements are made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

In conflict zones around the world, the protection of civilians and assets is a critical challenge. Hala Systems, a technology company specializing in innovative solutions for early warning and civilian protection, is at the forefront of addressing this issue. 

Hala Systems, with the support of Planet imagery, is creating a resilient, data-informed future for civilian protection in conflict zones. By integrating advanced technology and reliable data, they are making significant strides in reducing harm and increasing security for vulnerable communities around the world.

Hala Systems’ Mission and Partnership with Planet

Hala Systems’ mission is to save lives before, during, and after conflict through advanced solutions that provide reliable, structured data to decision makers. “For us, decision makers are civilians,” says Alexander Lee, Director for Activity-Based Intelligence at Hala Systems. “To reduce risks to people living in dangerous areas, we use technology to bring structured, trustworthy data to those who need it,” Lee elaborated. 

One of the key technologies for Hala Systems is satellite imagery from Planet. With PlanetScope, SkySat Archive, and Tile Views, Hala Systems builds comprehensive pictures of conflict zones, combining data from proprietary sensors with high-frequency satellite imagery to understand and predict events.

“Our primary mission is to save civilian lives in war zones. We start with a fundamental problem: How do we get good quality information into the hands of those who need it? People need to make decisions based on reliable data,” added Lee.

The integration of Planet imagery with Hala System’s data from proprietary sensors creates a robust system for monitoring and early warning. This system has proven invaluable in situations where traditional media cannot provide timely information. “Now, as a Planet Partner, we [Hala Systems] leverage Planet’s constellation of satellites to build comprehensive pictures in conflict zones,” said Lee.

One notable example of the impact of this partnership is the monitoring of a refugee camp in a war zone during a communications blackout. Rumors about the camp’s status abounded, but with frequent satellite imagery from Planet, Hala Systems could validate ground reports and ultimately document the activities happening at the inaccessible  camp. “Satellite imagery captured very frequently allowed us to see changes happening in and around the refugee camp, validating what we were hearing from the ground,” Lee recounts.

A Collaborative and Forward-Looking Partnership

Over the years, Hala Systems has found Planet to be a genuine, responsive partner aligned with real-world problems faced by its customers. “We’ve genuinely found that Planet increasingly is very in step and in synchronization with the problems that its partners and customers face,” says Lee. “We’re very happy today that we’re on this tremendous journey with Planet, working increasingly closer together to deliver insights to those who really need them.”

As far as the future goes, Hala Systems is now working on building new solutions and expanding their use cases, aimed at government defense and security teams. “We are planning to increase our remote monitoring capacity and capabilities by improving our end-to-end workflows,” says Alex. “We aim to provide even quicker insights to field offices and other end users, enabling faster assessments and better support for civilians.”

Watch the accompanying video to hear more from Alexander Lee on how this partnership is transforming lives:

Earlier this year, Planet, ERM, Salesforce, and NatureMetrics launched the NatureTech Alliance at the World Economic Forum in Davos to help companies harness advanced data and technology to tackle their most urgent nature challenges. This week at COP16, this Alliance released a new report with insights from leading companies about their nature performance journeys – what they’re learning, where they’re stuck. We identify key steps to move from “Do No Harm” to “Nature-Positive” through thoughtful and timely integration of data and tech, and show how leading performers are already on their way.

We’ve included our joint forward below and invite you to read the full report here. 

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“Forward: A new era for nature tech”

“As the eyes of the world turn to Cali, Colombia, for the next UN Biodiversity Conference, COP16, it is increasingly clear that companies are prioritizing biodiversity and combating the growing nature crisis. The scale of the crisis is clear: global biodiversity loss is accelerating at unprecedented rates. According to the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s 2023 Planetary Boundaries study, the current rate of species extinction is tens to a hundred times higher than the average over the last ten million years. These extraordinary losses threaten ecosystems, economies – and (they are now realizing) companies directly. 

For many years, companies have been conducting environmental impact assessments, identifying the presence of threatened and endangered species, and managing air and water pollution. Despite these efforts, biodiversity loss continues to increase: simply minimizing harm is no longer enough. The time has come for businesses to shift from reducing their environmental footprint to actively advancing net benefits to nature throughout their operations, supply chains, and products.

Companies must step up not just to be ‘good corporate citizens’ but because it is increasingly clear that the continued success of their businesses depends on it.

Two years ago, the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) of a global bank embarked on their nature journey, assuming it would follow the same path as tackling carbon. After all, if they could gain C-suite buy-in for decarbonization and address investors’ demands on stranded fossil fuel assets, how difficult could bugs and bunnies be?

A year in, the complexity of the task became evident. The breadth of issues, depth of business impact, and location-specific differences across their asset portfolio – exacerbated by seemingly infinite data sets – made the challenge feel overwhelming.

According to recent interviews with leading companies, this CSO’s experience is far from unique. Many are only beginning to grasp the magnitude of the biodiversity crisis and are turning to new data providers and technologies for solutions.

In mid-2024 the members of the Nature Tech Alliance—ERM, Salesforce, Planet, and NatureMetrics—assessed the current state of corporate biodiversity measurement, management, and disclosure through interviews with 18 leading companies. All of them are global corporations that are the ‘users’ of nature data, rather than technology providers looking for new markets (which are being well covered by excellent reports by Nature 4 Climate and others).

This white paper results from that collaboration. It outlines key pathways for businesses as they navigate new frameworks like the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), and European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) – all while addressing the pressing and practical challenges of biodiversity loss, water scarcity, and climate change. 

We offer practical insights for CSOs and CTOs as they guide their organizations through this next set of challenges. In short, aligning with their overall business goals: working across the value chain to achieve landscape-scale impact, by knitting together the tech architecture vital to deliver enterprise-wide transformation.”

Learn how governments and organizations leverage broad area management to monitor change across vast geographies and timescales.

Organizations across various sectors increasingly rely on real-time data and actionable insights to make informed decisions. Whether managing agricultural lands, monitoring natural resources, detecting threats, or overseeing vast infrastructure networks, the ability to efficiently observe, analyze, and manage broad areas of the Earth is crucial. This is where Planet comes in.

Planet offers a unique set of products — including daily Earth data, high-resolution tasking, advanced analytics, and powerful APIs —  that support broad area management by providing a multidimensional view of change as it’s happening.

This guide explores how Planet’s broad area management capabilities allow governments and organizations to look broader, closer, deeper, and back in time to identify and address new challenges and make better decisions.

Table of Contents

• Understanding Broad Area Management
  
  
• Broad Area Management Capabilities: Four Superpowers (Broader, Back, Closer, Deeper)
  
  
• Planet Products: The Broad Area Management Toolkit
  
  
• How Broad Area Management Is Used by Governments (Civilian and Military)
  
  
• How Broad Area Management is Used by Commercial Operations
  
  
• Future Trends in Broad Area Management
  
  
• A Holistic Approach to Broad Area Management
  

Understanding Broad Area Management

Broad area management is the practice of monitoring, measuring, and reporting change across large, dispersed geographic areas and timescales using Earth observation data.

This approach enables governments and organizations to gain insights into various natural processes and human activity, such as environmental changes, land use, and infrastructure development.

Broad area management is best achieved with scalable data, analytics, and software that capture multiple dimensions of information in near-real time — including location, time, and physical characteristics.

By leveraging high-frequency satellite imagery and advanced analytics from Planet, broad area management can help detect early threats, mitigate risks, ensure regulatory compliance, and improve disaster preparedness.

Broad area management from Planet includes four distinct capabilities which help enhance decision making. It allows organizations to:

• Look broader and monitor vast areas every day with daily satellite imagery
  
  
• Look back and identify changes with AI-powered alerts
  
  
• Look closer with high-resolution tasking imagery
  
  
• Look deeper with analytics-ready derived data
  

The Value of Broad Area Management

Historically, many organizations and agencies have relied on public satellite imagery, aerial surveys, in-field sampling, and other remote sensing to collect data across. But these tools aren’t enough to keep pace with changes fueled by climate change, population growth, new compliance requirements, and rising geopolitical tensions — especially in inaccessible or difficult to access areas.

Traditional data sources like drones and aerial imagery are often not collected frequently enough to spot changes early. Legacy IT systems often depend on highly manual processes, which can create analysis and reporting bottlenecks. And staffing shortages can make it even more difficult to scale up data collection and analysis.

Broad area management from Planet provides up-to-date, daily, and detailed insights into changing conditions.

Governments use these insights to support routine operations like permit compliance and code enforcement, implement new policies and programs, and coordinate responses to unplanned events like natural disasters and illegal activities. And use cases across commercial operations range from minimizing underwriting risk and increasing crop productivity to monitoring infrastructure development.

Ultimately, broad area management helps organizations across industries achieve a range of shared outcomes, including:

• Real-time monitoring and alerting of critical areas
  
  
• Faster issue discovery and decision-making
  
  
• Ability to do more with current budgets
  
  
• Increased efficiency and productivity of remote sensing workflows
  
  
• Streamlined data integration and analysis processes
  

Broad Area Management Capabilities: Four Superpowers

Broad area management brings together four distinct capabilities, or superpowers, to look broader across the landscape with daily monitoring, look back in time with our living archive, look closer at an area of interest with high-resolution tasking, and look deeper to see signals and patterns that fall outside the visible spectrum. Let’s take a look at each.

Looking Broader: Monitoring and Measuring Change Across Vast Geographic Areas

Basing decisions on data that is too narrow can have negative and even dangerous consequences — ranging from the loss of precious resources and funds to unnecessary suffering.

Monitoring large geographic areas is possible with Planet Monitoring — a fleet of 3.7 meter resolution (GSD) Dove® satellites that orbit the globe approximately every 90 minutes, capturing Earth’s landmass and coastal areas on a near-daily basis.

This continuous global coverage means there is PlanetScope® satellite imagery available almost anywhere it’s needed, so you can broaden your focus to include adjacent geographies immediately.

This additional context can eliminate assumptions in choosing the path forward — allowing teams to act with confidence and agility.

^{In early June 2023, the Nova Kakhovka dam across the Dnipro River in Ukraine collapsed, flooding several downstream cities. This high-resolution SkySat® image taken on June 6 captures the aftermath of the collapse in great detail. But it lacks the broader view — demonstrated by the background map.}

^{This time series of Planet Basemap images spanning May to July 2023, gives insights into the broader and potential downstream consequences of the collapse.}

Looking Back: Utilizing Earth Observation Data for Better Decision-Making

Planet operates hundreds of satellites that index the entire surface of the Earth nearly every day and feed the ever-growing Planet Archive — composed of more than 300 billion sq km of imagery, with proprietary datasets back to 2009 and public datasets back to 1972.

This means that for any given location on Earth’s landmass, the archive has an average of over 2,700 images of that area.

This unprecedented, living dataset of global change allows organizations to compare current conditions with those in the past to understand patterns in areas of interest, validate hypotheses of what is happening on the ground, and model future scenarios with confidence.

And these capabilities are magnified when combined with analytics and automation. Planet Analytic Feeds transform daily satellite imagery leveraging AI into sources of information that identify and classify buildings, roads, vessels, aircrafts, and other objects. When applied to the Planet Archive dataset, change can be detected efficiently over large periods of time, at scale.

^{The construction of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport near Mexico City between January 14, 2017 and January 27, 2024 — captured in 364 PlanetScope scenes.}

Looking Closer: High-Resolution Tasking for Detailed Inspection

Broad area management often begins with an expansive view that is refined once a change or specific area of interest is identified.

Then, when an even closer look is needed, Planet Tasking via the SkySat constellation offers satellite imagery at 50 cm resolution — which captures images with incredible clarity, revealing features as small as a tree.

This process of constant monitoring with always-on Earth observation data, paired with on-demand high-resolution tasked imagery, is called “tip and cue” — and it can be a powerful tool for organizations across industries.

With the ability to task satellites on-demand and rapidly capture high-resolution images, users gain access to near real-time information when they need it most.

^{A comparison of PlanetScope and SkySat images of Alexandroúpolis, Greece illustrates the value of looking closer, in a higher resolution.}

Looking Deeper: From Imagery to Measurements With Planetary Variables

Many Earth observation satellites image in multiple spectral bands, which means they’re capable of not just “true color” imagery, or imagery that looks like what a human eye would see, but also probe various segments of the electromagnetic spectrum.

And when this capability is applied to broad area management, we’re able to understand physical attributes across the Earth in a much deeper way. Through multispectral analysis across space and time, we’re able to look deeper and convert raw observations into quantifiable metrics.

Planetary Variables are Planet’s analysis-ready data products that are derived from sources across the electromagnetic spectrum, including optical, radar, passive microwave, and lidar sensors.

By fusing these distinct sources together with Planet imagery and tools, Planetary Variables unlock information about key characteristics that drive deep insights for a range of use cases, including:

• Agricultural monitoring: Cloud-free Crop Biomass data and Soil Water Content data help farmers and agricultural companies detect nutrient deficiencies, pests, diseases, and generate prescription maps for seeds and fertilizers. Field Boundaries trace the boundaries of agricultural parcels to help aid in food security, supply chain management, and commodities trading.
  
  
• Forest and land management: Forest Carbon offers up-to-date, accurate, and finely resolved measurements of the aboveground carbon stored in forests. This helps enable quantification of carbon stocks and regulation of forest degradation.
  
  
• Water resource monitoring: Soil Water Content data is used to help build models and make informed decisions about irrigation needs, drought risk, and ecosystem restoration projects. Land Surface Temperature helps monitor hot and dry conditions to track the feedback loop of drought, in addition to agriculture uses and commodity and yield prediction.

^{Soil Water Content allows organizations to monitor complex water systems by providing insights in water demand and storage capacity. Planet processes data from satellite sensors that measure passive microwave radiation, delivering near-daily measurements. Pictured here are measurements of soil water content near Ahlen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.}

Planet Products: The Broad Area Management Toolkit

Better information means better decisions. Planet products support broad area management for every location on the globe.

Planet Monitoring

Hundreds of PlanetScope satellites image nearly all of the Earth’s landmass on a daily basis, at 3.7 m resolution. Analysis-Ready PlanetScope data makes it easy to conduct deep time-series analysis, and Planet Basemaps provide seamless, up-to-date mosaics. These products provide a broad, near-daily view of any area of interest.

Planet Tasking

The SkySat constellation provides additional clarity for any area of interest with imagery at 50 m resolution and sub-daily revisit. These images allow for a closer look, when needed.

Planet Archive

The Planet Archive is composed of more than 300 billion sq km of imagery, with proprietary datasets back to 2009. It is a living dataset for any given location on Earth’s landmass — providing the ability to look back in time.

Planet Analytics

These products leverage machine learning to detect objects like roads, buildings, ships, and aircraft — transforming imagery into actionable information feeds. When combined with Planet PlanetScope and Archive data, these products can detect change over broad areas and timescales.

Planetary Variables

These analysis-ready data feeds  draw on numerous constellations to measure important conditions outside the visible spectrum, including:

• Soil Water Content: Provides high-resolution measurements of the water content of the soil, unhindered by clouds.
  
  
• Land Surface Temperature: Provides high-resolution measurements of the skin temperature of the surface of the Earth.
  
  
• Crop Biomass: Provides daily, cloud-free estimates of crop biomass.
  
  
• Field Boundaries: Includes a set of polygons that represents the boundaries of agricultural fields for any areas of interest.
  
  
• Forest Carbon: Provides timely, operational, near-tree-scale insights into global changes in canopy height, canopy cover, and aboveground carbon density.

These measurements provide a deeper look and understanding of changing conditions of the Earth’s surface.

Planet Insights Platform

The set of applications, APIs, data layers, and tools that help customers and partners create insights that characterize our changing physical Earth. 

The platform empowers developers, data scientists, and GIS teams to perform pixel-based analysis, calculate statistics, and prepare data for machine learning workflows on a global scale.

Planet Insights Platform supports broad area management by providing a central place for Earth data, analytics, and tools — to look broader, back, closer, and deeper.

How Broad Area Management Is Used by Governments

Governments have been early and active users of Planet data. The reason is simple: change is occurring faster than ever across their territories. These changes are driven by a variety of factors, including climate variability, land use changes (urbanization, agricultural expansion, and deforestation), and evolving policy mandates that need to be implemented and monitored.

These forces are reshaping day-to-day government data needs. Many department leaders and analysts are finding that in order to run programs effectively, they need more frequent and detailed information about activities on the ground. They need to be able to detect changes in near real-time, regularly monitor detailed changes over broad areas, and share insights across more government agencies and users. Let’s explore how they are using satellite imagery and data to support their policy goals.

Use Cases for Civil Government

• Agriculture compliance and risk monitoring
  Governments monitor agricultural practices for many reasons: to observe local production, safeguard the environment, support farmers, allocate subsidies with efficiency and transparency, and maintain confidence in the food supply chain. But existing methods for data collection and claim verification are highly manual, making it difficult to scale operations to meet new and evolving policy requirements.
  
  Broad area management enables faster, more accurate verification of management practices such as conservation tillage and cover cropping. This includes optimizing inspections, monitoring compliance, and administering subsidy programs more effectively.
  
  ARSKTRP — the Slovenia agency responsible for overseeing  Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments to farmers — used Planet satellite imagery and data to reduce the total number of inconclusive parcels by almost three-fourths, saving over €1M.
  
  
• Forest health monitoring
  Governments monitor forest health to identify new disturbances, track drought stress and wildfire risk, and allocate resources into management practices such as forest thinning, treatment or restoration work.
  
  But forests cover vast areas that are often difficult to reach, making it challenging for governments to gather and integrate multiple data sources that reveal trends over time.
  
  Broad area management helps governments develop and implement regional management strategies that protect and restore forested lands. This includes increasing the efficiency of pest and disease monitoring, fuels reduction and treatment, and forest restoration work.
  
  The Czech Republic, for example, experienced a significant population increase of bark beetles that threatened roughly 80% of the country’s spruce forests. However, the nation’s Forest Management Institute (FMI) mitigated the threat using Planet satellite imagery to detect which forests were affected. Among 55 randomly selected plots, 90% were infested, while 20% of the landowners were unaware.
  
  
• Deforestation monitoring
  Governments track deforestation to reduce forest crime, protect biodiversity and ecosystem services, uphold commitments to indigenous peoples, assess changes to carbon stocks, and more.
  
  Historically, many agencies have relied on highly manual processes for data collection and analysis. However, the size and complexity of many forested regions make it challenging to respond quickly and effectively to illicit activities like deforestation.
  
  Broad area management enables faster, more accurate detection of illegal logging, land conversion, and other indicators of forestry crime. This includes monitoring changes, document unpermitted activities, and streamlining enforcement operations.
  
  Planet customer, SCCON Geospatial, used Planet satellite imagery and data to build a custom platform with change-detection alerts that notify authorities of changes in forest cover within days. This allows the Brazilian Federal Police to prioritize interventions, accelerate investigations, and ensure that logging operations comply with legal permits.
  
  
• Wildfire monitoring
  Governments need data that helps quantify risk reduction and prioritize needs — including current information about roads and buildings, as well as hazard indicators.
  
  However, collecting, processing, and analyzing sufficient aerial data is expensive and time-consuming, and delays can increase vulnerability or even the cost to address known issues.
  
  Broad area management enables faster, more accurate monitoring of a range of potentially hazardous conditions, including tree mortality and disease, drought, utility line clearance, stand dynamics, and fuel loads. It also supports recovery efforts by verifying burn areas and supporting environmental impact assessments.
  
  In 2024 a wildfire spread across the island of Maui in Hawaii and devastated the town of Lahaina. Researchers (Caleb Robinson et al.), looking to analyze the disaster and better inform future emergency response efforts, utilized Planet satellite imagery and data to visualize and assess damages — testing a machine learning (ML) model to see how well it could identify structurally unsafe buildings.
  

Use Cases for Peace and Security

Foundational geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, describes the physical characteristics of an area of interest. All geospatially referenced intelligence analysis is built upon it, enabling imagery, signals, human, and all-source intelligence. Integrating foundational GEOINT into the decision-making process enables defense and intelligence agencies to enhance their effectiveness and agility in complex environments.

Planet broad area management capabilities are used by governments and defense organizations to gain situational awareness into activities like troop movements, the impacts of climate change, and illicit activities.

• Maritime domain awareness
  Governments need to capture a baseline of activity in their waterways, when changes in that baseline occur, and what took place, and whether the activity was nefarious. For example, two vessels fastened together indicating a ship-to-ship transfer.
  
  While public satellite imagery is available to help identify this activity, it isn’t frequent or detailed enough to detect and categorize every vessel that passes through waterways.
  
  With broad area management, governments can improve situational awareness in strategic maritime zones. This includes filling intelligence gaps, optimizing resource allocation, and responding swiftly to emerging threats and illegal activities.
  
  Supported by partners like Synmax, Planet satellite imagery provides unparalleled coverage and frequency, empowering organizations to maintain security, ensure safety, and protect economic interests. By leveraging Planet’s high-cadence satellite data, organizations can fill intelligence gaps, augment government capabilities, and improve situational awareness in strategic maritime zones.
  
  
• Foreign military intelligence
  In a world of rapidly increasing global competition, staying ahead requires more than just strategic planning — it demands real-time insights into activities happening across vast, geographically dispersed areas.
  
  With the ability to monitor vast areas and respond swiftly to changing conditions, broad area management enhances situational awareness and strategic planning. Precise, up-to-date geospatial data allows operations to stay ahead of potential challenges and reduce operational risk.
  
  Military leaders can detect changes such as damaged infrastructure or troop movements, enabling rapid, informed decision-making. This intelligence supports efficient resource allocation and mission planning in dynamic environments, ensuring operational success.

Broad Area Management and Commercial Operations

While broad area management is used across a diverse range of commercial industries to track and understand change, two notable examples are insurance and agriculture.

• Agricultural monitoring
  In agriculture, every part of the supply chain faces threats from weather, disease, and price uncertainty. Finding data to help track and respond to these risks can be unreliable, expensive, and challenging to process at scale.
  
  Broad area management enables faster, more accurate monitoring of crop health, soil conditions, and land use changes on individual fields to support data-driven management decisions.
  
  For example, Organic Valley, a national organic food brand and independent cooperative of small family farms, uses Planet near-daily satellite imagery to improve their pastures and herd nutrition, and contribute to sustainable agricultural practices like regenerative rotational grazing.
  
  And Planet partner Bayer Crop Science is leveraging Planet data to ensure that they have the right seed, in the right place, at the right time to serve their growers worldwide.
  
  
• Insurance underwriting and loss adjustment
  As the insurance industry grapples with an increasingly complex landscape fueled by climate change, better data and tools are needed to reduce risk, streamline processes, and more effectively protect communities where people live and work.
  
  Broad area management allows insurance companies to scale insights across geographies, develop advanced predictive modeling capabilities, and drive more efficient analysis.
  
  Planet partner AXA Climate leverages Planetary Variables to power their drought insurance program. Using the Planet Soil Water Content data feed, AXA Climate receives a measurement of the volume of water contained in soil at a high resolution in their areas of interest to a depth of about five centimeters. This critical information helps the insurance company determine risk for drought-related losses, such as crop yields.
  

Future Trends in Broad Area Management

As access to satellite imagery becomes more widespread, the focus on broad area management is shifting toward how to use this data more effectively. Here are two key trends shaping the future.

Prospects of AI and Machine Learning

While AI and ML are already integral to geospatial analysis, the future will see these technologies become even more refined and widely applied. They will streamline processes like object detection and change analysis, making extracting actionable insights from satellite imagery faster and easier. 

These advancements will continue to enhance the ability to monitor large areas in near-real time, improving response times and decision-making.

Advances in Satellite Technology

Ongoing innovations in satellite technology provide more detailed and frequent imagery, enhancing the ability to monitor large geographic areas more accurately. 

Improvements in imaging frequency, resolution, and data quality allow for more precise monitoring of environmental changes, infrastructure health, and land use compliance. As satellite technology evolves, these advancements will play a critical role in supporting broad area management across various sectors.

A Holistic Approach to Broad Area Management

Detecting change across vast and remote areas of the earth is challenging — especially if you don’t know where to look or windows for decision making are small.

Broad area management enables daily insights across large known and unknown geographies using the power of satellite imagery and analytics. 

The tools that allow organizations to look broader, closer, deeper, and back in time come together in Planet Insights Platform — which provides a central place for Earth data, applications, APIs, data layers, and tools. 

The platform operates across ecosystems to seamlessly integrate with other GIS applications and platforms, such as ESRI, to deliver users a comprehensive view of an area of interest. Additionally, partners and developers leverage the platform to create customized solutions tailored to the specific needs of defense and intelligence organizations.

Planet Insights Platform allows users to leverage the power of near-daily Earth observation data to work more efficiently, reduce risk, improve compliance, and allocate resources in informed and equitable ways. They can look broadly with near-daily imagery, look back with a robust archive, and take closer look with high resolution imagery, and see deeper with derived data. Interested in learning more about how Planet Insights Platform and broad area management can support your policy and operational goals?  Contact us today.

Note: This piece can also be read in English and Spanish.

As mudanças climáticas estão intensificando os desastres naturais na América Central e na América do Sul, desde incêndios florestais devastadores até inundações e deslizamentos de terra. Segundo o Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudanças Climáticas (IPCC), a frequência e a intensidade dos eventos climáticos extremos na região aumentaram significativamente nos últimos anos, resultando em um crescimento de 23% no número de desastres naturais registrados na última década. Esse risco crescente levou tanto o setor público quanto o privado a repensar suas abordagens em relação à gestão de desastres.

Durante o recente evento “Planet On The Road” em Bogotá, Colômbia, especialistas da região compartilharam como estão utilizando dados de satélites em tempo real para proteger as comunidades frente a esses desastres iminentes.

Monitoramento de Riscos em um Mega Projeto de Barragem na Colômbia

Em grandes represas, os riscos de inundações e deslizamentos de terra exigem a proteção tanto do meio ambiente quanto das comunidades locais. William Ramírez, profissional de Gestão Ambiental, Social e Sustentabilidade da Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM), discutiu o monitoramento de riscos no megaproyecto hidroelétrico Hidroituango, na Colômbia.

O projeto Hidroituango representa um desafio único devido à sua magnitude e aos potenciais impactos ambientais ao longo do rio Cauca. Detritos flutuantes, deslizamentos de terra e chuvas intensas ameaçam tanto a represa quanto às áreas circunvizinhas.

A equipe de Ramírez utiliza imagens da Planet para avaliar continuamente a situação e tomar medidas preventivas antes que os riscos se tornem desastres. “O monitoramento por satélite nos permitiu controlar e caracterizar os fenômenos”, destacou. “Isso não abrange apenas a ameaça de inundações, mas também outros tipos de riscos de origem natural ou humana.” Com dados quase em tempo real, a EPM pode proteger de maneira mais eficaz a infraestrutura, o território e as vidas.

Combate a Incêndios Florestais com Dados em Tempo Real no Chile

O Chile enfrenta desafios únicos. Valentina Espinosa, gerente geral da Raster4, ressaltou a importância de contar com dados satelitais confiáveis em um país que se estende por mais de 4.000 quilômetros e enfrenta ameaças que vão de tsunamis a vulcões. “Antes da Planet, estávamos praticamente cegos”, afirmou.

Ela destacou o valor de dados quase em tempo real durante o devastador incêndio no Chile no início deste ano. “Conseguimos colaborar no incêndio de Valparaíso ao detectar automaticamente quais áreas estavam sendo afetadas pelo fogo e entregar rapidamente essa informação às prefeituras e instituições governamentais que apoiamos.”

Espinosa enfatizou que a automação por meio do aprendizado profundo foi crucial para uma resposta ágil. Ao aplicar processamento automático de IA nas imagens da Planet, a Raster4 conseguiu compartilhar atualizações com as instituições governamentais em minutos, em vez de horas. “Ao fornecer dados praticamente em tempo real, conseguimos identificar as melhores rotas de evacuação e transmitir essa informação aos bombeiros.”

Previsão do Risco de Desastres na Colômbia, Equador e Panamá

Inovações que integram IA e imagens de satélite estão transformando a gestão do risco de desastres. Marta Valbuena, gerente de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento da Procalculo, explicou como essa empresa utiliza big data para prever e mitigar riscos na Colômbia, Equador e Panamá.

A Procalculo analisa dados da Planet para entender como diversas características do território aumentam ou diminuem sua vulnerabilidade a riscos. Por exemplo, certos tipos de vegetação podem tornar uma área mais ou menos propensa a incêndios.

Os modelos preditivos da Procalculo incorporam uma ampla gama de variáveis naturais, como topografia, capacidade do solo, geologia, precipitação e fenômenos como El Niño e La Niña. Eles também consideram fatores antropogênicos, como estradas, culturas, população e a localização de habitações e indústrias. Com essas informações, Procalculo prevê quais territórios são mais propensos a serem afetados por desastres naturais e implementa medidas para proteger tanto as pessoas quanto o meio ambiente.

“Os dados detalhados e frequentes da Planet nos permitem enriquecer nossos processos de inteligência artificial”, destacou Valbuena, “realizando análises com melhor desempenho e obtendo um conhecimento mais profundo sobre nosso território em termos de gestão de riscos.”

Uma Nova Era para a Gestão de Desastres na América Latina

Desde a previsão e mitigação do risco de desastres até a coordenação de respostas, os tomadores de decisão na América Latina estão utilizando a tecnologia para agir de forma proativa, em vez de reativa, diante da crescente ameaça dos desastres naturais.

Informações oportunas ajudam governos e organizações a agir rapidamente e de forma eficaz. Além disso, a colaboração entre os setores público e privado acelerou o desenvolvimento de novas ferramentas, como modelos de risco impulsionados por IA, que transformam a maneira como as comunidades compreendem e respondem às ameaças de desastres naturais. À medida que o clima continua a mudar, essas tecnologias se tornarão ainda mais essenciais. O trabalho realizado em toda a América Latina serve como modelo de como soluções baseadas em dados podem salvar vidas em todo o mundo.

Note: This piece can also be read in English and Portuguese.

El cambio climático está intensificando los desastres naturales en Centro y Suramérica, desde feroces incendios forestales hasta devastadoras inundaciones y deslizamientos de tierra. Según el Panel Intergubernamental sobre Cambio Climático (IPCC), la frecuencia e intensidad de los eventos meteorológicos extremos en la región han aumentado significativamente en los últimos años, lo que ha provocado un aumento del 23% en el número de desastres naturales registrados en la última década. Este riesgo creciente ha llevado tanto al sector público como al privado a replantear su enfoque hacia la gestión de desastres.

En el reciente evento “Planet On The Road” en Bogotá, Colombia, expertos de la región compartieron cómo están utilizando datos satelitales en tiempo real para proteger a las comunidades ante estos inminentes desastres.

Monitoreo de riesgos en el proyecto de una mega-represa en Colombia

En las grandes represas, los riesgos de inundaciones y deslizamientos de tierra elevan significativamente la necesidad de proteger tanto el medio ambiente como a las comunidades locales. William Ramírez, Profesional en Gestión Ambiental, Social y Sostenibilidad de Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM), habló sobre el monitoreo de riesgos en el megaproyecto hidroeléctrico Hidroituango, en Colombia.

El proyecto Hidroituango plantea un desafío único por su magnitud y los posibles impactos ambientales a lo largo del río Cauca. Los escombros flotantes, los deslizamientos de tierra y las intensas lluvias representan una amenaza tanto para la represa como para las zonas aledañas.

El equipo de Ramírez utiliza imágenes de Planet para evaluar continuamente la situación y tomar medidas preventivas antes de que los riesgos se conviertan en desastres. “El monitoreo satelital nos permitió controlar y caracterizar los fenómenos”, señaló. “Esto no solo abarca la amenaza de inundaciones, sino también otros tipos de riesgos de origen natural o humano”. Con datos casi en tiempo real, EPM puede proteger de manera más efectiva la infraestructura, el territorio y las vidas.

Combate de incendios forestales con datos en tiempo real en Chile

Chile enfrenta una serie de desafíos únicos. Valentina Espinosa, Gerente General de Raster4, explicó la importancia de contar con datos satelitales confiables en un país que se extiende por más de 4,000 kilómetros y enfrenta diversas amenazas, desde tsunamis hasta volcanes. “Antes de Planet, estábamos prácticamente ciegos”, afirmó.

Ella destacó el valor de los datos casi en tiempo real durante el devastador incendio en Chile a principios de este año. “Pudimos colaborar en el incendio de Valparaíso al detectar automáticamente qué áreas estaban siendo afectadas por el fuego y entregar rápidamente esta información a las municipalidades y entidades gubernamentales que apoyamos”.

Espinosa resaltó que la automatización mediante el aprendizaje profundo fue clave para una respuesta ágil. Al aplicar procesamiento automático de IA a las imágenes de Planet, Raster4 pudo compartir actualizaciones con las instituciones gubernamentales en minutos, no en horas. “Al entregar datos prácticamente en tiempo real, lograron identificar las mejores rutas de evacuación y transmitir esta información a los bomberos”.

Predicción del riesgo de desastres en Colombia, Ecuador y Panamá

Las innovaciones que integran IA e imágenes satelitales están transformando la gestión del riesgo de desastres. Marta Valbuena, Gerente de Investigación y Desarrollo de Procalculo, explicó cómo esta empresa utiliza el big data para predecir y mitigar riesgos en Colombia, Ecuador y Panamá.

Procalculo utiliza los datos de Planet para analizar cómo diversas características del territorio aumentan o disminuyen su vulnerabilidad a los riesgos. Por ejemplo, ciertos tipos de vegetación pueden hacer que una zona sea más o menos propensa a incendios.

Sus modelos predictivos incorporan una amplia gama de variables naturales, como la topografía, la capacidad del suelo, la geología, las precipitaciones y los fenómenos de El Niño y La Niña. También consideran factores antropogénicos, como carreteras, cultivos, poblaciones y la ubicación de viviendas e industrias. Con toda esta información, Procalculo predice qué territorios son más propensos a ser afectados por desastres naturales e implementa medidas para proteger tanto a las personas como al medio ambiente.

“Los datos detallados y frecuentes de Planet nos permiten enriquecer nuestros procesos de inteligencia artificial”, señaló Valbuena, “realizando análisis con mejor rendimiento y obteniendo un conocimiento más profundo de cómo está nuestro territorio en términos de gestión del riesgo”.

Una nueva era para la gestión de desastres en América Latina

Desde la predicción y mitigación del riesgo de desastres hasta la coordinación de respuestas, los responsables de la toma de decisiones en América Latina están utilizando la tecnología para responder de manera proactiva, en lugar de reactiva, a la creciente amenaza de los desastres naturales.

La información oportuna ayuda a los gobiernos y organizaciones a actuar de forma rápida y eficaz. Además, la colaboración entre los sectores público y privado ha acelerado el desarrollo de nuevas herramientas, como los modelos de riesgo impulsados por IA, que transforman cómo las comunidades entienden y responden a las amenazas de desastres naturales. A medida que el clima sigue cambiando, estas tecnologías serán cada vez más esenciales. El trabajo que se está llevando a cabo en toda América Latina sirve como modelo de cómo las soluciones basadas en datos pueden salvar vidas a nivel mundial.

Today, we’re thrilled to release Analysis-Ready PlanetScope (ARPS). ARPS harnesses a cutting-edge proprietary algorithm to create harmonized and spatially consistent near-daily stacks of images that enable time-series analysis and machine learning applications.

ARPS normalizes data from PlanetScope’s daily 3m imagery by reducing inconsistencies between captures. It then harmonizes that data with temporally and spatially consistent third-party sources (like Landsat, Sentinel-2, MODIS, and VIIRS) to produce a pre-processed stack of imagery. The result is a more precise dataset that’s readily-available for manipulation, analysis, and visualization in the Planet Insights Platform.

While PlanetScope data enables timely investigations and real-time decision-making, ARPS is optimized for temporal analysis that takes the past into account and ensures accurate measurements for changes over a long period within an area of interest. Its consistency and customization means users spend less time formatting data and more time analyzing how it’s changing.

^{Comparison of Analysis-Ready PlanetScope to PlanetScope Surface Reflectance Scenes. Analysis-Ready PlanetScope shows improved radiometric consistency over time and spatially-composite PlanetScope Scenes yield more complete coverage over AOIs.}

“Government entities and commercial customers alike often utilize satellite data and machine learning algorithms to manage large areas of land,” said Troy Toman, Planet’s Chief Product Officer. “But current models are often built with data that is inconsistent, misaligned with third-party sources, or require extensive time to prepare. ARPS solves this challenge by streamlining data for analysis and is the latest offering in a suite of products that empower users to get the most from their AI and ML models.”

ARPS is a critical tool for Planet users seeking ways to manage large areas of land more efficiently. For civil government agencies that monitor and enforce regulations of natural resources, ARPS enables them to detect deviations such as unauthorized pesticide use or deforestation and intervene expediently. For agricultural operations, ARPS can provide accurate and timely information on vegetation health, irrigation needs, and invasive species detection. In forestry, companies leveraging ARPS can better estimate biomass, conduct post-fire recovery assessments, and monitor carbon stocks.

“Analysis-Ready PlanetScope has had a tremendous impact on our product,” said Joaquin Peraza, CTO at Oryzativa. “We significantly reduced our error-rate percentage on biomass growth modeling after moving to ARPS from Landsat and Sentinel data, and we’re excited to continue using ARPS to help improve the accuracy of our models.”

In a rapidly changing, data-saturated world, tools that help separate the signal from noise are more important now than ever. With ARPS integrated into the Planet Insights Platform, stakeholders have an accessible, near-daily way to analyze the relevant changes that matter to them over time all in one place.

Learn how ARPS helps solves challenges facing data scientists and image analysts in this Agile EO webinar.

Note: This piece can also be read in Spanish and Portuguese.

Climate change is intensifying natural disasters in Central and South America, from raging forest fires to devastating floods and landslides. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in the region have increased significantly in recent years, leading to a 23% rise in the number of recorded natural disasters in the last decade. The rising risk has pushed public and private sectors alike to rethink their approach to disaster management.

At the “Planet On The Road” event in Bogotá, Colombia, experts from the region shared how they’re using real-time satellite data to protect communities. 

Monitoring Hazards at a Mega-Dam Project in Colombia

At large dam sites, flood and landslide risks create high stakes for environmental protection and local communities. William Ramírez, Environmental, Social, and Sustainability Professional at Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM), discussed risk monitoring at Colombia’s Hidroituango hydropower project.

The Hidroituango project presents a unique challenge due to its scale and potential environmental impacts along the Cauca River. Floating debris, shifting land, and heavy rainfall all threaten the dam and surrounding areas. 

Ramírez’s team uses Planet imagery to continuously assess the situation and take preventative action before hazards become disasters. “Satellite monitoring allowed us to control and characterize the phenomena,” he noted. “That does not only involve the threat of flooding but other types of threats of natural or human origin.” With near real-time data, EPM can better safeguard infrastructure, land, and lives.

Fighting Wildfires with Real-Time Data in Chile

Chile faces its own set of challenges. Valentina Espinosa, General Manager at Raster4, told us what a difference reliable satellite data makes in a country that spans over 4,000 kilometers and faces everything from tsunamis to volcanoes. “Before Planet, we were essentially blind,” she said. 

She illustrated the life-saving value of near real-time data during Chile’s devastating fire earlier this year. “We were able to help in the Valparaíso fire by automatically detecting where sectors were being affected by the fire and quickly delivering this information to the municipalities and government institutions that we support.”

Espinosa stressed that automation through deep learning was critical for rapid response. Applying automated AI processing to Planet images let Raster4 share updates to government institutions in moments, not hours. “By delivering data in practically real-time, they could see what the best evacuation routes were and deliver this information to firefighters.” 

Predicting Disaster Risk Across Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama

Innovations that integrate AI and satellite imagery are reshaping disaster risk management. Marta Valbuena, Research and Development Manager at Procalculo, walked us through how Procalculo uses big data to predict and mitigate risks across Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama. 

Procalculo uses Planet data to understand how various characteristics of a territory raise or lower its vulnerability to risks. For example, certain types of vegetation could make an area more or less susceptible to fire. 

Procalculo’s predictive models incorporate a wide range of natural variables, including topography, soil capacity, geology, rainfall, and El Niño and La Niña phenomena. They also consider anthropogenic elements such as roads, crops, populations, and location of housing and industry. With all that information, Procalculo can predict which territories are likely to be more affected by natural disasters and implement measures to protect both people and the environment.

“The detailed and frequent data from Planet allows us to enrich our artificial intelligence processes,” Valbuena said, “to carry out different analyses with better performance, and gain more detailed knowledge of how our territory is in terms of risk management.”

A New Era for Disaster Management in Latin America

From predicting and mitigating disaster risk to helping coordinate disaster responses, decision-makers in Latin America are using technology to respond proactively, rather than reactively, to the growing threat of natural disasters.

Timely insights help governments and organizations to act swiftly and effectively. Moreover, collaboration between public and private sectors has accelerated the development of new tools, such as AI-driven risk models, that transform how communities understand and respond to natural disaster threats. As the climate continues to change, these technologies will only become more vital. The work we’re seeing across Latin America serves as a model for how data-driven solutions can save lives worldwide.

Global food security is a persistent challenge in advancing the collective Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. According to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 (SOFI) report, nearly 2.33 billion people are experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity. With rising global populations coupled with extreme weather events, land degradation, and natural resource depletion, it’s becoming harder to achieve food security. These  challenges demand a combination of new and innovative solutions and approaches. 

Food Security in Asia-Pacific

Asia-Pacific is home to 60% of the world’s population and is a major agricultural producer. While it has abundant, arable lands and large water bodies, this region is still no stranger to climate change vulnerability, geopolitical conflicts, and economic inequality which disrupt food production and distribution.

On World Food Day 2024, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) urges people to take action using the lens of the “Four Betters” framework: better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life that leaves no one behind. While governments, humanitarian organizations, and the private sector have programs in place to address food security, these initiatives must be reinforced through stronger regional cooperation to create a sustainable and lasting future.

During our 30-minute World Food Day webinar, Cultivating a Regenerative Future: Satellite Data for Food Security & Environmental Protection in Asia-Pacific, we shared insights on how our regional partners and customers use the Planet Insights Platform to help meet these objectives.

Better Food Production and Environment With Planet Satellite Data

At Planet, we’ve had the rare opportunity to support governments and organizations in advancing their sustainability initiatives and food security policies in Asia-Pacific. Through broad area management, we have expanded our products and capabilities to make better and more informed decisions: 

1. An updated Planetary Variable: Crop Biomass to enable simplified daily data feeds on crop growth monitoring.
2. The addition of the Planetary Variable: Field Boundaries to provide accurate and foundational data on crop-level growth and yield estimates.
3. The launch of our first Tanager hyperspectral satellite with the capacity to capture 420 different colors and detect gasses in the air, chemicals on the ground, and more.

In our recent Planet Connect sessions in Japan, Australia, and Vietnam, our local partners and customers engaged in knowledge-sharing opportunities and best practices using Planet data.

We believe that ensuring food security requires innovation, emerging technologies, and timely insights. Ready to learn more? Contact us so we can help you find the right solutions to meet your goals.

Traditionally, identifying patterns of change on land has been expensive, complex, and labor-intensive, making it difficult to scale to the vast amount of available satellite imagery. To address this challenge, Planet partner Impact Observatory has developed AI-powered geospatial monitoring tools that help decision-makers understand risks and anticipate changes at unprecedented speed and scale.

“Impact Observatory works with the U.S. government and with state and local governments, to help them understand the threats and risks of climate change and natural disasters,” said Steve Brumby, CEO of Impact Observatory. “Planet data provides a unique capability to understand how the world is changing and allow people to anticipate the worst effects and plan to intervene in time to help save lives.”

Beyond disaster response, Impact Observatory also monitors a growing range of land cover types to provide insights into defense and intelligence, urban development, natural resource management, and agriculture. Their land cover solution, IO Monitor, detects change and patterns that enable data-driven decisions with an up-to-date understanding of any place on Earth.

Situational Awareness Powered by Living Maps

Human populations and vegetation states are constantly changing and moving. Impact Observatory provides ground teams with living maps that help them understand these changes. When natural disasters strike, access to the latest maps is invaluable for supporting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.

“The U.S. government came to us and asked us for help making maps of the counties in Florida that were about to be hit by Hurricane Idalia,” Brumby shared. “The official map of the United States, made by the federal government, is three years old. And a thousand people a day move to Florida.”

As emergency response teams mobilized to enter the areas where the Category 4 hurricane was expected to hit, they required accurate, up-to-date information about the situation on the ground, including human population counts and locations. National assets alone couldn’t provide this data. Within 24 hours, Impact Observatory delivered a living map to the U.S. government, leveraging PlanetScope’s approximately 3 m resolution imagery and AI. These living maps were crucial for confirming and prioritizing evacuation plans and search-and-rescue efforts.

A Partnership Empowering Global Decision-Makers

The partnership between Planet and Impact Observatory accelerates awareness and reduces response times for emergency situations and climate risks. It provides governments, non-profits, companies, and markets with clear, current sustainability and environmental risk analyses for any place on Earth.

Impact Observatory continues to innovate, expanding their land-cover categories with PlanetScope imagery to give decision-makers the precise information they need, when they need it. “We use Planet imagery because, in our opinion, Planet is the first and the best space constellation for producing a picture of the world,” Brumby emphasized.

Watch the accompanying video to hear more from Steve Brumby on how this partnership is making a difference: