Forest Carbon Monitoring System Deployment Accelerated by Planet
Planet Labs is accelerating its forest carbon monitoring system with the acquisition of Salo Sciences. The climate technology company builds advanced 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 its 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.
Forest Carbon Monitoring System Fills Gaps in Environmental Data
Planet says it 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, the aim is to enable 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.
(Source: Planet Labs news release. Images provided)