Our planet is changing dramatically in ways that are visible even from space. These changes are in part because of climate change amplifying environmental disturbances, like wildfires and floods, and human activity, like deforestation and urban development. Detailed information about these changes and their impact on people, the climate, and ecosystems can help governments and researchers develop helpful solutions and minimize their effects on issues like climate change, food insecurity and loss of biodiversity.Historically, it’s been difficult to access detailed, up-to-date land cover data which documents how much of a region is covered with different land and water types such as wetlands, forests, agricultural crops, trees, urban development and more.To help turn satellite imagery into more useful information for quantifying change, we worked with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to create Dynamic World. Powered by Google Earth Engine and AI Platform, Dynamic World provides global, near real-time land cover data at a ten-meter resolution, giving an unprecedented level of detail about what's on the land and how it's being used — whether it’s forests in the Amazon, agriculture in Asia, urban development in Europe or seasonal water resources in North America. With this information, people — like scientists and policymakers — can monitor and understand land and ecosystems so they can make more accurate predictions and effective plans to protect our planet in the future.A more detailed understanding of earth’s land than ever beforeCurrently, most existing datasets assign a single land cover type to an area of land — like trees, built-up, crops or snow — based on what’s most prominent in a satellite image combined with an expert’s determination of the land cover. So current datasets might classify a satellite image of a city as ‘built-up,’ but visit any city and you’ll see our world is far more dynamic. While you might see lots of buildings, you’ll also see trees or even snow on the ground from a recent storm.To create a more accurate understanding of land cover with Dynamic World, our partners at WRI identified the nine most critical land cover types we wanted to classify: water, flooded vegetation, built-up areas, trees, crops, bare ground, grass, shrub/scrub, and snow/ice. Dynamic World uses our AI and cloud computing to detect combinations of different land cover types and make conclusions about how likely it is for each of the nine types to be present in every pixel (about 1,100 square feet of land) of a satellite image.This level of insight into how land is being used can help public, private and non-profit decision makers better understand what’s happening to the world’s land. With this knowledge, they can develop plans to protect, manage and restore land, and monitor the effectiveness of those plans using alert systems to notify when unforeseen land changes are taking place.As Craig Hanson, Vice President of Food, Forests, Water and the Ocean at the World Resources I
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