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Observing the Earth with satellites offers clear advantages when it comes to tracking the health of the planet—consistent measurements that can be translated into environmentally relevant estimates, such as carbon, crop productivity, or land use. The resulting information covers large regions, irrespective of administrative boundaries. These measurements also drastically reduce costs compared with on-the-ground data collection efforts. Earth observation (EO) data thereby efficiently deliver timely insights that can directly inform sustainability debates, including with regard to United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the heart of these efforts are open data initiatives linked to the public release of medium- to high-resolution EO image archives, such as Landsat (from the US Geological Survey) or Copernicus data (from the European Space Agency ESA). A growing body of scientific literature attests to the important role of EO data in providing timely and accurate information that’s directly relevant to the SDGs (1).
Rufin et al. (Wed,) studied this question.