AI-powered Forest Carbon Monitoring Product at 3-Meter Resolution
Planet Labs PBC, a leading provider of daily Earth data and insights, released its Forest Carbon Monitoring product, consisting of quarterly, 3-meter resolution measurements of forests globally. This new product offers partners and customers an unprecedented dataset to support voluntary carbon markets, regulatory compliance, and deforestation mitigation.
Commenting on the climate crisis, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said “Planet’s Forest Carbon Monitoring system is an important tool that helps the world monitor, protect, and manage one of the important resources in absorbing carbon from the atmosphere — our global forests. This kind of information is vitally important to governments, scientists, and advocates working to safeguard humanity’s future.”
This quarterly dataset estimates aboveground carbon, canopy height, and canopy cover over the entire Earth dating back to 2021, setting a new standard for monitoring forest growth and change. 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.
In order to measure forest carbon stocks, stakeholders typically use ground measurements, fly expensive airborne missions over select areas, or pay for temporally and spatially patchy satellite data. But by leveraging Forest Carbon Monitoring data — built using Planet’s extensive archive of PlanetScope imagery and a global library of airborne and spaceborne LiDAR data, with processing by AI — users can derive precise, scalable, and affordable measurements without sacrificing scientific rigor.
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. Then they can draw on Forest Carbon Monitoring data to track changes and assess policy impact and effectiveness.
Forest Carbon Monitoring can be leveraged by companies aiming to comply with the new EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Measuring tree canopy and carbon stock change of sourcing regions can help mitigate and track any commodity-driven deforestation risks. And in the case of EUDR, ensuring compliance can help companies avoid fines and help jurisdictions sustainably maintain agricultural exports.
