This region suffers from major droughts, weed, pathogen, and insect invasions as well as excessive salt and chemical content in the soil. The full name of A14SA, which is funded by the Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, is “Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Water, Nutrient, Salinity, And Pest Management in The Western U.S.” The project is working to improve the sustainability of irrigated agriculture in California and the U.S. “Our project’s license gives faculty, researchers, educators, staff, and students the ability to benefit from this imagery.”

“I’m so pleased to invite the UCR community to use this imagery for research and education activities,” said Elia Scudiero, a professional researcher in UCR’s Department of Environmental Sciences, and principal investigator of AI4SA. The images range in spatial resolution from approximately 10 to 16 feet, and archived images are also available dating back to 2009. The company accomplishes this with 200-plus satellites that monitor Earth’s landmass on a daily basis. These images come from the appropriately named Planet Labs Inc., whose mission is to use space to help life on Earth. Planet’s daily multispectral images enable the characterization of Earth’s surface processes, including monitoring agricultural systems. PlanetScope imagery over a portion of the UCR campus.

Satellite images of earth