Improving crop yields, vigor and health, can be facilitated by better monitoring of the cross-sectional area of vegetation—i.e., Leaf Area Index or LAI. However, measuring LAI on the ground is time consuming and expensive. Sentinel-2, operated by the European Space Agency, publishes a global LAI product; but at 10m resolution and a […]
Glacial lakes in mountainous regions are prone to outburst floods that can devastate entire communities. With climate change, glacial ice is thinning and retreating in the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalaya region, posing an increasing threat to human life and requiring improved monitoring. Nida Qayyum, in the Department of Space Science at […]
On a rapidly changing Earth, space-based imaging provides one of the most critical inputs to our scientific understanding of the whole Earth system. With the rapid increase in the number of medium- to high-resolution imaging sensors, there is increasing need for standard calibration methodology. An increase in sensor fusion, in which researchers […]
Change in vegetation color, chemistry and metabolic activity is one of the most striking signals of life in our biosphere. Satellite imagery plays an important role in effectively retrieving and mapping these vegetation changes over time—also called phenology. The rapid revisit period of the PlanetScope cubesat constellation provides researchers with a unique […]
Coastal wetlands, especially salt marshes, store vast amounts of terrestrial carbon both above and belowground. Conserving and restoring them can help sequester such carbon, but sea-level rise and other anthropogenic threats risk liberating these long-term carbon stores to the atmosphere where they would contribute to climate change. Gwen Miller, a Ph.D. Student […]
Satellite-derived bathymetry has numerous applications, including enhanced mapping and classification of bathymetric features such as coral reefs and seagrass meadows, as well as use in maritime navigation and coastline infrastructure. Dimitris Poursanidis from the Foundation for Research and Technology in Hellas, with colleagues from the German Aerospace Centre, used Planet’s Dove images […]
Globally, landslides kill ~5,000 people per year. If landslides—including rock falls, mudslides and other surface failures—can be better predicted, these deaths could be avoided. Landslides are highly heterogeneous, both spatially and temporally. They are more common in the steep, mountainous regions of the Earth, but also more frequent during particular seasons due […]
Temporal resolution is one of four axes by which one may judge the value of a remote sensing data source. Unlike spatial, spectral and radiometric resolution, temporal resolution can be used to decompose the day-to-day dynamics of ecosystems, revealing their phenology—the natural processes by which ecosystems (particularly vegetation) change over time. A […]
When disaster strikes, accurate information about the scale and scope of impact becomes critical. The first 24 hours are often the most important, and any accurate data may prove life saving. Leveraging data from Planet’s Disaster Program, Bruno Adriano and his team used a variety of data sources and machine learning to […]
The movement of river sediment influences many aspects of land management, including water quality and the life cycle of dams and other impoundments. Hydrologists will benefit from improved methodologies to track river sediment flow and geomorphological evolution of the river channel. Robert Strick, from the University of Brighton, and colleagues used a […]
