SAN FRANCISCO – Earth observation company Planet unveiled a product Sept. 24 for monitoring global forests.
Planet’s Forest Carbon Monitoring product offers quarterly estimates of the amount of carbon stored in branches, leaves and other plant tissue above ground at a resolution of three meters per pixel. In addition, it shows canopy height and canopy cover, information often needed for voluntary carbon markets, regulatory compliance and deforestation mitigation.
“If we’re to avoid blowing up the planet, we have to value carbon and nature into our economy,” Will Marshall, Planet CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. “Step one is measurement. To date we faced the choice between tape measures around tree trunks, which is accurate but not scalable, or inaccurate global systems. Planet’s forest carbon data is meant to fix that gap: scalable and accurate forest carbon data, at the individual tree level, updated quarterly.”
Historical Data
Planet’s Forest Carbon Monitoring product includes quarterly data beginning in 2021.
“No operational forest monitoring system has been deployed at this resolution and cadence before now,” according to the news release. “Forest Carbon Monitoring equips stakeholders with a cost-effective way to monitor forested areas — scaling from a single tree to the entirety of the Amazon rainforest.”
The new dataset relies on artificial intelligence to process PlanetScope imagery along with airborne and spaceborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data. PlanetScope is the global imagery of Earth’s landmass that Planet acquires with a constellation of approximately 130 satellites.
“We believe this dataset will underpin global carbon markets — a multi-trillion-dollar transition,” Marshall said.
“For countries implementing policies to reduce deforestation and sequester carbon, establishing an accurate baseline to quantify the current state of their forests is a critical step,” according to the news release.
Regulatory Compliance
On Dec. 30, 2024, the European Union’s new Regulation on Deforestation Free Products will go into effect. To comply, companies must perform due diligence to ensure products don’t come from land cleared of forests or trees after Dec. 31, 2020. Companies that fail to comply may be subject to significant fines.
BeZero Carbon, a London-based carbon-ratings agency, gained early access to Planet’s Forest Carbon Monitoring product.
“Tackling climate change requires significant investment in carbon projects,” Phil Platts, BeZero Carbon vice president of geospatial and Earth observation, said in a statement. Platts called Planet’s new product “the first and only dataset delivering high cadence, global forest carbon estimates” at three-meter resolution.
“We rate hundreds of projects, of all kinds, all over the world,” Platt said. “Doing so requires an enormous range of data, which we evaluate and combine project by project. Having Planet data in the mix is incredibly helpful, and we are using it to detect individual trees.”
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