Planet Forest Carbon Data

Planet data is available for order in Lens Lite, Lens Standard, and Lens Enterprise plans.

Overview

Through Lens, you can easily access Planet’s global carbon data products. There are two carbon data packages offered by Planet available in Lens: the Carbon Diligence dataset (30 meter resolution) and the Carbon Monitoring dataset (3 meter resolution). Both data packages include the three data layers of Canopy Height, Canopy Cover, and Aboveground Carbon. Additionally, with both data packages you will receive the entire historical archive with your first purchase as an added bonus. 

Diligence Data (30m)

Planet's Forest Carbon Diligence product provides annual 30m data for Canopy Height, Canopy Cover, and Aboveground Carbon. This data is globally available and is best used for the diligence phase of projects.
  • Resolution: 30 meter
  • Timing: Annual; 2013 - present
  • Cost: $0.04/acre
    • With your first order of Forest Carbon Diligence, you will receive the most recent available year plus the entire historical archive as an added bonus. 
To learn more about the technical specifications and methodology of Planet's data, see their report here. To learn more about Planet's model validation, please see their report here.

Left to right: Planet's Canopy Height, Aboveground Carbon, and Canopy Cover at 30m. Learn more about the data here.

Monitoring Data (3m)

Planet's Forest Carbon Monitoring product provides quarterly 3m data for Canopy Height, Canopy Cover, and Aboveground Carbon. This data is globally available and is best used for the ongoing monitoring of projects. This data provides more granularity than the Diligence data with both higher spatial and temporal resolutions. It can help reduce costly field surveys and give you insight into changing on-the-ground conditions. 
  • Resolution: 3 meter
  • Timing: Quarterly; 2021 - present
    • Quarters are seasonal; they are based on solstice and equinox cycles rather than the fiscal quarters
  • Cost: $0.10/acre
    • With your first order of Forest Carbon Monitoring, you will receive the most recently available quarter plus the entire historical archive as an added bonus. 

Left to right: Planet's Canopy Height, Aboveground Carbon, and Canopy Cover at 3m.

Ordering data

Planet Forest Carbon Data can be ordered through Lens on a per-acre basis with no minimums, just like commercial truecolor imagery. Diligence data (30m) costs $0.04/acre and Monitoring data (3m) costs $0.10/acre. With your first order of Forest Carbon data, you will receive the most recent available data plus the entire historical archive as an added bonus. Purchases will not cover the surrounding buffer area of a property in Lens. 

To view these layers, first navigate to the Layers Library and select the portfolios where you'd like the Planet Forest Carbon data to appear. You can select individual portfolios, or choose for the data to appear in all portfolios by default. 

To order data, navigate to the order pane on the left side of a property map. You can scroll back to the most recent year, or you can filter to the Forest Carbon data by source. The preview screen will show the layers that will be included in your purchase, the price, and the date range of included data. 

Once you order data, it will process for 15-30 minutes before becoming available for viewing in your Layer dropdown at the top of your screen. As with other modeled datasets, Planet Carbon data is displayed under the "Data" section of the Layer dropdown. 

Lens provides the right tools for monitoring, analyzing, and reporting your Planet Forest Carbon data. Using these tools, you can understand changes and trends in aboveground carbon, canopy height, and canopy cover.

Monitoring

In the interactive example below, you can use Compare Mode to see explore a landscape between in 2022. It can be helpful to compare different layer types against one another to gain context and spot changes. 

Analyzing

You can use the Analysis tool to quickly and confidently understand trends across your properties. The Forest Carbon Diligence datasets can be analyzed to visualize changes back to 2013 on annual time steps. The Forest Carbon Monitoring datasets can be analyzed to visualize quarterly changes back to the beginning of 2021. 

When viewing an Analysis chart, you can enlarge it and click on individual data points to visualize the associated layer. To visually compare two points on the chart, hold down Shift while you click each to open Compare Mode. 

Reporting

Analyze Area charts and observations made while viewing Planet Forest Carbon data can be saved to your Lens account as Notes. These notes can be exported from Lens by clicking the Report button at the top of the Notes pane. Reports will include all attribution, interpretations, and visuals. 

A page of a report generated from Lens. To learn more about generating reports, see our article here.

Sharing and downloading data

Lens allows you to easily share Planet's Forest Carbon data. In addition to sharing observations via Reports, you can also generate share links and create embedded maps. 

GeoTIFFs and interacting with data in GIS

You can also download data as GeoTIFFs, which are georeferenced raster files. These are exported at full resolution, and can be used in GIS applications. To download a GeoTIFF of a layer, navigate to the Details pane while viewing the Planet data you'd like to download. 

By clicking 'Download' next to 'GeoTIFF', you will download a zipped folder containing four GeoTIFF files: (1) the data itself (aboveground carbon, canopy cover, or canopy height), (2) a file ending in '-qa' which provides quality assurance data for the layer, (3) a file ending in '-uc' that provides uncertainty data, and (4) a file ending in '_doy' that provides day-of-year information at each pixel for the calendar day of satelite observations used for modeling. The file name of the zipped folder will include the Lens property name and the name of the data layer; after unzipping or extracting the folder you can add these files to your GIS software as you would any other raster data layer. 
For aboveground carbon data, the main data file will have only one band where the values represent MgC/ha. Canopy cover data will have one band representing meters. And canopy height data will also have one band where values represent percent cover. The uncertainty data for all three data layers estimates the bounds of the 90% prediction interval for the model predictions at each pixel. The uncertainty data includes two bands where Band 1 provides the values for the 5th percentile (the lower bounds of the 90% prediction interval) and Band 2 provides the values for the 95th percentile (the upper bounds of the 90% prediction interval). For more detail, see Part 3: Data Products of Planet's technical specifications.