Forestry and land cover
Four decades of archive make the chainsaw visible.
Forests disappear in days. Cloud cover hides them for weeks.Near-real-time deforestation alerts
Dense time-series of optical and SAR imagery can flag new forest clearance within days of occurrence. The hard problem is not the algorithm; it is cloud cover, revisit gaps, and minimum mappable area.
Sentinel-1 SAR (C-band, ESA)Landsat 8/9 OLI (USGS/NASA)Sentinel-2 MSI (ESA)
Concessions have boundaries. Chainsaws do not respect them.Illegal logging activity detection
Selective illegal felling leaves faint but readable signatures: coherence loss in SAR time-series, skid trails visible in very-high-resolution optical imagery, and clearance polygons that cross-check against published concession cadastres.
Sentinel-1 SAR (C-band, ESA)Capella Space SAR (X-band)Planet SkySat
Deforestation maps miss most of the damage. Physics does not.Forest degradation and sub-canopy damage mapping
Selective logging, fuelwood extraction and edge erosion thin a canopy without clearing it. Binary deforestation alerts stay silent. L-band SAR and spectral unmixing reveal the gradient between intact and gone.
ALOS-2 PALSAR-2Sentinel-2 MSILandsat 8/9 OLI
Forests store carbon invisibly. Physics makes it measurable.Carbon stock estimation and REDD+ verification
Satellite lidar and SAR backscatter, fused carefully, can estimate above-ground biomass across millions of hectares and underpin credible REDD+ MRV. The methods work well in low-to-medium biomass forests; they hit hard physical limits in dense tropical canopy above roughly 100 Mg/ha.
GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation)ICESat-2 ATLASALOS-2 PALSAR-2
Forests absorb radar until they don't. That threshold is the problem.Above-ground biomass estimation with SAR and lidar fusion
SAR backscatter correlates with woody volume up to a saturation ceiling that hides the heaviest carbon stocks. Fusing P-band radar with GEDI lidar height metrics pushes that ceiling higher and produces spatially continuous biomass maps with honest uncertainty bounds.
ESA BIOMASS P-band SARNASA GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation)JAXA ALOS-2 PALSAR-2
Every species grows differently. That difference is the signal.Plantation species and age-class mapping
Commercial plantations of eucalyptus, acacia and pine look similar from the ground but diverge sharply in their seasonal reflectance trajectories. Multi-temporal Sentinel-2 time-series, particularly the red-edge bands, can separate species and rotation age-classes that standard NDVI misses entirely.
Sentinel-2 MSIPlanet SuperDoveLandsat 8/9 OLI
Every country thinks it knows its land. Few have measured it.National-scale land-cover classification
Wall-to-wall land-cover maps built from multi-seasonal satellite composites are the baseline every forest, agriculture and planning policy rests on. Getting the class definitions, sensor mix and accuracy reporting right is harder than the imagery makes it look.
Sentinel-2 MSISentinel-1 SAR (C-band)Landsat 8/9 OLI
Lidar samples dots. Machine learning fills the forest between them.Canopy height model derivation from spaceborne lidar
GEDI and ICESat-2 measure canopy height with centimetre-scale vertical precision but sparse footprints. Fusing those samples with Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 optical covariates via ML regression produces wall-to-wall canopy height models, with honest uncertainty that varies by forest structure.
GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation)ICESat-2 ATLASSentinel-1 SAR (C-band)
Smoke hides the flame. Physics does not.Active fire detection and burned-area mapping
Thermal anomaly detection from VIIRS and MODIS locates active fires within hours of ignition, while post-fire NBR differencing and SAR coherence map what burned after the smoke clears. Each method has hard limits that operational users must understand.
VIIRS (Suomi-NPP / NOAA-20)MODIS (Terra / Aqua)Sentinel-2 MSI
A fire starts in seconds. The fuel that feeds it accumulates over years.Fire fuel load and fire-risk mapping
Satellite-derived vegetation indices and spaceborne lidar can map canopy fuel loads and live fuel moisture proxies at landscape scale, giving fire managers a quantitative basis for suppression planning before ignition occurs.
Sentinel-2 MSILandsat 8/9 OLIGEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation)
Spectral greenness returns in three years. Forests take decades.Post-fire and post-disturbance forest recovery monitoring
Dense Landsat and Sentinel-2 time-series, combined with spectral indices and the LandTrendr segmentation algorithm, can track canopy regrowth trajectories after fire, storm or clearance. The critical caveat: spectral recovery consistently outpaces structural and biodiversity recovery, a gap that matters enormously for carbon accounting.
Landsat 8/9 OLISentinel-2 MSIMODIS Terra/Aqua
Prop roots betray themselves. Radar sees what tides try to hide.Mangrove extent and change detection
Mangroves occupy less than 0.5% of the world's forest area yet rank among the most carbon-dense and ecologically critical coastal ecosystems. Satellite SAR and multispectral data, combined carefully, can map their extent and track losses to aquaculture and development with sub-hectare precision.
Sentinel-1 C-band SAR (ESA)Sentinel-2 MSI (ESA)ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 L-band SAR (JAXA)
Drained peat sinks slowly. The carbon bill arrives fast.Peatland drainage and subsidence monitoring
Sentinel-1 InSAR time-series can detect millimetre-scale surface subsidence over drained peatlands, while optical imagery maps the canal networks driving that collapse. Together they underpin credible REDD+ and voluntary carbon accounting.
Sentinel-1 SAR (C-band, InSAR)ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 (L-band SAR)Sentinel-2 MSI
Roads enter the forest before the chainsaws do.Forest road and logging infrastructure detection
Unpaved logging roads and skid trails are the earliest detectable signal of forest exploitation. Sub-metre optical imagery and SAR coherence methods can map them weeks before canopy loss becomes visible to coarser sensors.
Planet SkySatMaxar WorldView-3ESA Sentinel-1 (C-band SAR)
The forest shrank. Whether it counts depends on the definition.Annual tree cover loss and gain tracking
Annual global tree cover change is now measurable at 30 m resolution from 2000 onwards, but the numbers mean different things to different jurisdictions. Definitional gaps between remote-sensing products and national forest inventories have direct consequences for REDD+ carbon accounting.
Landsat 8/9 OLISentinel-2 MSIMODIS Terra/Aqua
A forest's calendar is readable from orbit. Few people read it.Forest phenology and seasonality mapping
Dense satellite time-series reveal when forests flush, peak and senesce, exposing differences between forest types and flagging drought stress weeks before visible dieback. This page explains the sensors, methods and honest limits of spaceborne phenology mapping.
MODIS Terra/AquaVIIRS SNPP / NOAA-20Sentinel-2 MSI (2A and 2B combined)
The canopy remembers exactly how much wood left.Selective logging intensity and volume extraction mapping
Spaceborne lidar and high-resolution optical imagery can estimate timber volume removed per logging event, answering not just whether cutting occurred but how much. Combining GEDI waveform data with Planet SuperDove time series turns canopy geometry into extraction accounts.
GEDI (NASA Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation)ICESat-2 ATL08 (NASA)Planet SuperDove
Same dead trees, very different carbon story depending on what killed them.Forest carbon flux attribution to disturbance type
Fire, logging, windthrow and drought mortality each release carbon at different rates and leave different spectral fingerprints. Multi-sensor fusion lets analysts attribute the cause, not just record the loss.
Landsat 8/9 OLISentinel-1 C-band SARGEDI (NASA spaceborne lidar)
Canopies dry out weeks before they turn brown.Tropical forest moisture stress and drought vulnerability mapping
Shortwave-infrared reflectance ratios reveal canopy water loss well before visible browning. Sentinel-2, Landsat and ECOSTRESS together give forest managers an early-warning signal for fire risk, carbon loss and drought-induced die-off.
Sentinel-2 MSILandsat 8/9 OLIECOSTRESS (ISS-mounted)
The canopy hides the understory. L-band and P-band do not care.Understory vegetation structure mapping with SAR penetration
L-band and P-band SAR penetrate closed forest canopies and return backscatter from shrub and herb layers that optical sensors never reach. Polarimetric decomposition separates what is canopy, trunk, and ground.
ALOS-2 PALSAR-2ESA BIOMASSSentinel-1 (C-band)
A tree cannot hide how old its scar is.Forest stand age reconstruction from disturbance history
Every clearcut, fire or windthrow leaves a spectral signature that persists through decades of Landsat imagery. Tracing that recovery trajectory pins stand age to within a few years, making it the most cost-effective input to carbon density and biodiversity assessments.
Landsat 4-9 (USGS/NASA)Sentinel-2 MSI (ESA)MODIS Terra (NASA)
A forest can shrink without losing a single hectare on paper.Forest fragmentation and edge-effect metric derivation
Aggregate area figures hide the fragmentation that degrades carbon stocks and microclimate along forest edges. Patch-level metrics derived from 10 m classified imagery expose what the totals conceal.
Sentinel-2 MSIPlanet SuperDoveMaxar WorldView-3
Broadband sensors see a forest. Hyperspectral sees which forest.Forest type and floristic composition mapping with hyperspectral data
Contiguous narrow spectral bands from 400–2500 nm reveal leaf biochemistry that broadband sensors cannot resolve, enabling forest-type mapping at the level of dominant species or functional group. PRISMA, DESIS, EMIT and EnMAP make this operational from orbit.
PRISMA (ASI, Italy)DESIS (DLR, aboard ISS)EMIT (NASA, aboard ISS)
The canopy looks solid. The numbers inside it tell a different story.Canopy gap fraction and leaf area index retrieval
Leaf area index and gap fraction quantify how much sky a forest actually hides, governing light interception, water use and productivity estimates. Satellite retrievals at 500 m to 20 m now make these variables operational for forest managers and carbon accountants alike.
MODIS MOD15A2H (Terra/Aqua)Sentinel-2 MSIMISR (Terra)
Kilns hide under canopy. Their heat and scars do not.Illegal charcoal production site detection
Charcoal kilns leave two signatures readable from orbit: a thermal anomaly during firing and a circular clearing afterwards. Combining Planet Dove time series with SWIR and thermal bands turns an invisible rural industry into a mappable deforestation driver.
Planet SuperDove (PlanetScope)Planet SkySatSentinel-2 MSI
You cannot weigh forest soil from orbit. You can read its surface.Forest soil organic carbon proxy mapping from surface indicators
Direct soil organic carbon measurement from space remains beyond current sensors. Proxy-based mapping, using SAR backscatter, L-band moisture and optical indices in forest gaps, constrains REDD+ baseline uncertainty and tells field teams where to dig.
ALOS-2 PALSAR-2Sentinel-1 SARSentinel-2 MSI
A forest can look green from orbit while its interior has collapsed.Forest degradation detection from lidar waveform shape analysis
Spectral indices cannot see inside a canopy. Full-waveform lidar from GEDI and ICESat-2 exposes the vertical structure that degradation destroys first, making it the most direct spaceborne route to IPCC Tier 2 carbon accounting.
GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation)ICESat-2 ATL08Sentinel-2 MSI
Every crown has a fingerprint. Reading it requires the right timing.Individual tree species identification from very-high-resolution imagery
Sub-metre multispectral and hyperspectral imagery can classify individual tree crowns to species or genus level, but only when collected at the right phenological moment. Sensor choice, acquisition timing and classification method together determine whether you get a map or noise.
Maxar WorldView-3Airbus Pléiades NeoASI PRISMA
Forests spend water invisibly. Physics makes the bill legible.Forest evapotranspiration and rainfall interception estimation
Forest canopies return 30–70% of precipitation to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration and interception. Thermal sensors and energy-balance models now quantify that flux from orbit, giving water managers a number rather than an assumption.
ECOSTRESS (ISS-mounted)MODIS MOD16A2Landsat 8/9 TIRS
Roads move more sediment than chainsaws. Few assessments notice.Logging road erosion and sediment delivery risk assessment
Newly cut logging roads are the dominant sediment source in logged catchments, yet they rarely appear in carbon or biodiversity assessments. Satellite-derived road networks, slope models and rainfall erosivity layers can quantify sediment delivery risk to downstream water bodies before field crews arrive.
Sentinel-1 SAR (C-band, ESA)Planet SkySat (optical, sub-metre)Maxar WorldView-3 (optical, very high resolution)
A forest can look dense from above and be nearly empty below.Biodiversity proxy mapping from forest structural complexity
Three-dimensional canopy structure predicts vertebrate and invertebrate richness better than canopy cover alone. GEDI waveforms and airborne lidar quantify the vertical heterogeneity, gap density and rugosity that field ecologists use as habitat-quality proxies.
GEDI (NASA/ISS)ICESat-2 ATL08ALOS-2 PALSAR-2
Every national inventory calls it broadleaf forest. It is not.Bamboo forest extent and phenological cycle mapping
Bamboo covers an estimated 35 million hectares globally yet is routinely absorbed into broadleaf forest classes in national inventories, distorting carbon accounts and timber assessments. Dense satellite time series expose bamboo's distinctive phenological signature where standard land-cover maps see only undifferentiated canopy.
Sentinel-2 MSIMODIS MOD13Q1Sentinel-1 SAR (C-band)
Storms don't wait for clear skies. SAR doesn't either.Snow damage and windthrow detection in temperate forests
Catastrophic windthrow and snow-loading events can flatten thousands of hectares overnight. SAR coherence loss detects the damage within days regardless of cloud cover, while optical follow-up maps salvage priorities once conditions allow.
Sentinel-1 C-band SAR (ESA)Sentinel-2 MSI (ESA/Copernicus)TanDEM-X (DLR)
The beetles arrive weeks before the forest turns brown.Forest insect outbreak and bark beetle stress mapping
Bark beetle and defoliator outbreaks leave spectral fingerprints in red-edge and SWIR bands before visible browning begins. Sentinel-2 and Landsat time series can track infestation from green attack through grey snag, with an honest detection lag of four to eight weeks post-attack.
Sentinel-2 MSILandsat 8/9 OLIPlanet SuperDove
Counted as neither forest nor farm, agroforestry vanishes from the books.Agroforestry system canopy cover and tree density mapping
Agroforestry systems cover hundreds of millions of hectares yet fall between forest inventories and agricultural censuses. Spaceborne lidar and spectral unmixing can close that gap at national scale.
GEDI (NASA/ISS)Sentinel-2 MSIPlanet SuperDove
Leaves betray their water deficit before a fire finds them.Forest canopy equivalent water thickness and live fuel moisture mapping
Shortwave-infrared absorption features at 970 nm, 1200 nm and 1450 nm allow satellite retrieval of canopy equivalent water thickness and live fuel moisture content, key inputs to fire-risk modelling and drought-stress assessment. Accuracy depends heavily on canopy closure, sensor spectral resolution and the inversion algorithm chosen.
PRISMA (ASI)Sentinel-2 MSILandsat-8/9 OLI
Fallen stems cannot scatter like standing ones. Physics keeps the record.Wind-throw and storm-damage extent mapping using SAR coherence loss
Catastrophic wind events destroy interferometric coherence between SAR image pairs, leaving a measurable signal even under cloud. This page explains how C-band and L-band coherence loss is used to map storm damage extent, what the method can and cannot resolve.
Sentinel-1 C-SAR (ESA)ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 (JAXA)RADARSAT-2 (MDA)
Lianas hide in plain sight. Their physics does not.Liana infestation and canopy structural disruption mapping
Liana-dominated canopy patches suppress host-tree growth, flatten vertical foliage profiles and shift red-edge reflectance in ways that high-resolution multispectral, hyperspectral and lidar data can resolve. Detection confidence is real but conditional on spatial resolution, phenological timing and forest complexity.
WorldView-3 (Maxar)Planet SuperDove (PlanetScope)GEDI (NASA, aboard ISS)
Leaves broadcast their chemistry. Imaging spectrometers are listening.Foliar nitrogen and nutrient status retrieval from hyperspectral imagery
Nitrogen absorption features near 1510 nm and 2050 nm let imaging spectrometers map canopy nutrient status at stand scale. Retrieval accuracy is real but bounded: mixed-species canopies and cloud cover impose hard limits that any honest analysis must quantify.
PRISMA (ASI)DESIS (DLR / Teledyne)EnMAP (DLR)
The forest is gone. Proving what replaced it is harder.Commodity-driven deforestation attribution and supply-chain traceability
Detecting deforestation is solved. Attributing it to cattle, soy, palm oil or timber concessions requires layering spectral trajectories, cadastral boundaries and concession maps, and the answer is often probabilistic rather than certain.
Planet NICFI BasemapsSentinel-2 MSILandsat-8/9 OLI
Canopy height is measurable. Aerodynamic resistance is calculated. The gap is parameterisation.Forest canopy roughness and aerodynamic resistance mapping for flux modelling
Spaceborne lidar and SAR texture can replace field-measured roughness lengths in Penman-Monteith and similar flux models, but sampling gaps and stand heterogeneity introduce real uncertainty that buyers must understand before operationalising.
GEDI (NASA Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation)ICESat-2 ATL08Sentinel-1 C-SAR
Clearing stops at the boundary line. The satellite does not.Protected area boundary encroachment and buffer-zone clearing detection
Encroachment into protected areas often advances in narrow, incremental strips designed to avoid detection. Spatial analysis combining change-detection outputs with WDPA boundary geometries can expose the pattern, but cloud cover and resolution limits set real constraints on alert latency.
Sentinel-2 MSIPlanet SuperDovePlanet SkySat
Optical sensors see leaves. L-band sees what the roots are drinking.Root-zone soil moisture estimation under forest canopy using SAR and optical fusion
C-band radar stops at the canopy surface; L-band SAR from ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 and the forthcoming NISAR mission penetrates to rooting depths where tree water stress actually begins. Fused with Sentinel-2 vegetation indices and a water-cloud model, it yields volumetric soil moisture estimates that no optical sensor can match.
ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 (JAXA)NISAR (NASA/ISRO, planned launch 2025)Sentinel-1 C-SAR (ESA)
Dead trees still talk. Satellites read the silence in their canopy.Standing dead wood and tree mortality mapping for carbon and biodiversity accounting
Standing dead wood is invisible to most forest inventories yet mandatory in IPCC Tier 2 carbon accounting. Red-edge indices, SWIR reflectance and spaceborne lidar waveforms can locate and quantify it, though confusion with drought-stressed live trees remains a genuine problem.
Sentinel-2 MSIWorldView-3GEDI (NASA spaceborne lidar)
Seeds follow physics. Gaps wider than dispersal range break the network.Forest connectivity and seed-dispersal corridor identification from canopy structure
Canopy height models and high-resolution tree-cover maps let ecologists quantify forest connectivity using graph-theory metrics, revealing which gaps isolate patches and where restoration planting restores dispersal pathways.
NASA GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation)NASA/USGS ICESat-2 ATL08Planet SuperDove