Resources

In late 2024, Planet launched a new impact program called Project Centinela to help leading scientists, conservationists, and stewards monitor and safeguard 50 of the world’s vulnerable biodiversity sites. Project Centinela provides a three-year “biodiversity subscription” of Planet imagery and analytics for those on the frontlines of conservation around the world. We consider the program a core element of Planet’s contributions to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and an initiative that helps us fulfill our Public Benefit Corporation purpose. We inaugurated the program with an initial set of ten sites in 2024, and now we’re proud to welcome another five sites into the program.

Conservation Metrics works with indigenous communities worldwide to provide tools and systems for environmental monitoring and protection. As part of our Guardian Connector toolkit, our team needed a workflow orchestrator that could handle data processing from various sources, particularly for centralizing data from many different field data collection applications used by communities, and monitoring illegal activities in protected territories.

Having migrated from Dagster, we found that Windmill offered the accessibility and ease of use we needed for our small teams and non-technical users. Its intuitive interface and flexibility allowed us to focus on our core mission, rather than spending time on framework configuration or building additional user interfaces.

While there is a wealth of spatial data and tools available to support forest protection, these resources often remain inaccessible to the communities that need them most. To bridge that gap, Conservation Metrics, along with UNDP, the Equator Initiative, NASA, Nature4Climate, Awana Digital, Rainforest Foundation US and Global Forest Watch, developed an online, self-paced certificate course to equip Indigenous and frontline communities with foundational knowledge and practical skills to map, monitor, and manage their forests.

The vulnerable California red-legged frog faces pressure from farmers who need their breeding grounds to irrigate crops. Conservation Metrics, is using machine learning technology to better identify the frogs’ habitats and flag them for protection.

Counting elephants helps scientists know where and when they’re being killed. Despite elephants’ massive size, they are hard to spot in the rainforest.

On the mountainous island of Kauai, elusive shearwaters and petrels burrow deep in the forested terrain. Saving them requires a radical effort, led by a man who is no less extreme.

Faced with mountains of image and audio data, researchers are turning to artificial intelligence to answer pressing ecological questions.

Thought to be extinct on the Hawaiian Island for centuries, Newell’s Shearwaters and Hawaiian Petrels were found using acoustic monitoring.

Acoustic monitoring combined with powerful machine learning is giving researchers new insights into the elusive Ashy Storm-Petrel. It’s just one way that artificial intelligence can tackle pressing conservation challenges.