Natural ecosystems like lakes, marshes, and forests are constantly changing and teeming with biodiversity. But not all change is healthy — disease, drought, wildfire, and other perils present serious risks to many natural environments that provide livelihood to local economies and habitats for countless species.

For civil government agencies, monitoring vast and remote territories with traditional ground surveys or periodic aerial flights is slow and expensive. Infrequent observations leave critical temporal blind spots. By the time damage is discovered during a routine check, restoration is often complex and costly.

Near-daily satellite imagery provides a continual and objective way to monitor the health of natural environments across large and often remote regions. By capturing data at regular intervals, satellite imagery helps agencies take a proactive approach and respond to changes as they are happening. Let’s take a look at what that means for managing two key ecosystems: water bodies and forests.

How Satellite Data Supports Water Resource Management

Government agencies are responsible for managing rivers, reservoirs, watersheds, coastlines, and water resources, while improving resilience to flooding, drought, and long-term environmental change. This is further complicated by the need to comply with water quality legislation and an increase in disasters like floods and drought.

Satellite imagery provides insights to respond to these challenges, especially in two key use cases:

• Disaster lifecycle
  • Flood extent and inundation mapping
  • Water quality and harmful algal bloom (HAB) early warning
  • Reservoir level and drought depletion tracking
    
• Permitting and policy compliance
  • Identify encroachment of marine protected areas (MPA)
  • Track illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing
  • Monitor wastewater and effluent discharge

By tracking water ecosystems from space, teams can make better decisions to prepare for and respond to disasters, as well as identify policy infringement. Learn how Map Impact, a UK geospatial analytics and solutions provider, used Planet satellite data to study and improve water quality of Windermere, England’s largest freshwater lake.

How Satellite Data Supports Forest Monitoring

Government agencies are also responsible for protecting, monitoring, and sustainably managing vast forests, while balancing conservation, economic productivity, resilience, and restoration.

Like water resource management, continual satellite data is used in forestry to minimize and manage disaster risk, and identify illicit activity:

• Disaster lifecycle
  • Wildfire risk and fuel load monitoring
  • Post-fire burn scar and severity mapping
  • Pest and disease mapping
    
• Permitting and policy compliance
  • Track new clearings or roads that indicate unpermitted deforestation
  • Identify protected area encroachment
  • Validate timber harvesting permits

High-frequency satellite data provides continual insights to help maintain healthy forests and demonstrate sustainable forest management. Learn how the Forest Management Institute (FMI) used Planet data to track and manage the most severe bark beetle outbreak in the country’s history, an infestation that damaged more than 200,000 hectares of forest between 2015 and 2021.

Learn More

You can visit our website to continue reading about how satellite imagery supports natural resource monitoring. Or, if you’re particularly interested in using satellite data to drive policy results, check out our blog article, Strong Environmental Policy Requires Persistent Satellite Monitoring.