Planet Accelerates Deployment of Forest Carbon Monitoring System

By: Robbie Schingler and Tara O’Shea

Planet’s founding mission is to use space to help life on Earth, and we’re excited to advance that goal by announcing our acquisition of Salo Sciences! Salo is a climate technology company that builds cutting-edge forest monitoring systems to measure Earth’s constantly changing ecosystems using artificial intelligence and multi-sensor Earth observation data. Planet plans to leverage Salo’s technologies to further develop our Planetary Variables offerings and help customers globally quantify and verify carbon stocks, monitor forest change, and mitigate climate risks.

Monitoring carbon stocks and emissions is critical to mitigating climate change, providing insight and accountability into the effectiveness of carbon drawdown strategies like tree planting and avoiding deforestation. We expect the high resolution insights provided by Salo’s technologies will also be critical to address a number of challenges facing supply chain and sustainable land use monitoring, bolstering the work Planet already supports in these areas. Leading partners and customers around the world are putting Planet’s data products and services to work in the following ways:

• Improving Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) commitments and payments pledged under the 2015 Paris Accord (supported by our landmark contract and partnership with Norway’s International Climate & Forests Initiative).
• Enabling efficient and transparent voluntary carbon market projects, including with verification and platform partners.
• Helping decouple deforestation from commodities production, including with leading supply chain management software partners.
• Reducing wildfire risk and increasing landscape-scale resilience.

Planet is constantly working to bridge the gap between complex remote sensing science and real-world solutions. Integrating Salo’s technologies into our imagery and technology stack will help generate understanding of environmental changes at the scale of individual trees. By adding Forest Carbon to the catalog of Planetary Variables, including Soil Water Content, Land Surface Temperature, and Biomass Proxy data, Planet aims to expand its offerings of global analysis-ready data. 

In addition to forest carbon mapping, Salo brings technologies and expertise in mapping patterns of forest structure, wildfire risk, and biodiversity change around the world. Their products provide information for electric utilities by mapping where overhanging trees may strike power lines, for firefighting agencies working to mitigate catastrophic wildfire risks, and for land managers like the US Forest Service, who use Forest Observatory data to quantify shifts in species habitat that result from disturbances like logging, wildfires, and climate change.

By joining together as one team, we aim to enable our customers to account for the critical services that forests provide, and work to change economic incentives around land use to meet global climate and sustainability goals. We view Salo’s technologies as instrumental to the sustainable transition of the global economy and as a pivotal tool needed to scale and enable systematic measurements of critical data.  

For more information on Planetary Variables and how Salo will look to add data feeds that accurately measure important conditions on the surface of the Earth, please visit here.

Forward-looking Statements

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this blog post 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 expectations with respect to future performance and anticipated impacts of its acquisition of Salo Sciences, the Company’s ability to capture market opportunity and realize any of the potential benefits from any current or future product enhancements, new products, or strategic partnerships and customer collaborations. 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 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.