A Question for the Community: Is Tree-Level Monitoring from Space Possible?

Hi ​@Mario WWW , great questions!

Planet does operate a satellite hyperspectral instrument — Tanager — but it is a 30 m resolution tasking system. Tree-level hyperspectral analyses often use airborne imaging spectrometers to get tree-scale data (1-3 m resolution). You can check out this special issue dedicated to tree-level data science for tree mapping using high res airborne data, for example.

Here are some useful resources for addressing your research questions, albeit indirectly:

PlanetScope provides 8-band multispectral data that are great for monitoring vegetation health, including red edge and near infrared channels. I recommend working with normalized surface reflectance mosaics or analysis-ready planetscope (ARPS) to improve normalization and consistency.

To find how others are using PlanetScope data in practice, you can search for relevant use cases in the Publications Database.

You might also be interested our forest monitoring products like Forest Carbon Monitoring. This includes 3m resolution estimates of canopy height and canopy cover that are updated quarterly, which are effective for mapping tree extent and tree change over time (though these are not designed to evaluate tree health).

We recently provided two open data releases related to agroforestry: the Individual Tree Detection benchmark dataset and the Agroforestry Tree Species Identification dataset. You might find these useful for R&D.

While high resolution hyperspectal is not available through Planet we do provide a great series of tools for high resolution tree mapping and tree monitoring that I hope you find useful. There’s no “one” way to evaluate tree stress or tree health, so it is hard to build a single product that does so, but these tools should provide the ingredients necessary for you to develop a monitoring solution that works in your context.

Good luck!