As we round the final bend of 2023, our surroundings are settling into a new season. Our team members on the east coast of North America experienced a sunset as early as 4:03pm this past weekend, and if you're purchasing imagery for properties in the Northern Hemisphere, those afternoon shadows may be more apparent. But the shorter days have hardly slowed down our team, so read on for some exciting updates in Lens.
Lens is a fantastic tool for identifying non-point sources of water pollution. Like using 3D mode and the Vegetation dataset to spot clearcuts, or the USGS Flowlines overlay and high-res imagery to spot areas at risk of manure runoff. Moving downstream, you can now use Lens to monitor algae blooms in bodies of water with the new Chlorophyll S2 Index Layer. In conjunction with our Analyze Area tool, you can understand seasonal trends, outlier bloom events, and more.
Want to see an example? Check out a bloom from this past summer via this share link. Head over to the Lens Library to add this layer to your account.
See something in Lens that you'd like to share with the world, like that algae bloom in the example above? Try our Share Link feature. We've just added the option to include a text description so you can provide narrative and context for your audience. Click the example below for more details.
Available for Lens Plus and Enterprise
Our Parcel Owner and Vegetation Alerts are powerful tools for passively monitoring activity and ownership within your properties. We've made a couple recent changes to reduce noise and increase the quality of alerts you receive. For Vegetation Alerts, you will no longer receive alerts for the buffer areas surrounding your properties. And for Parcel Owner Alerts, we will exclude tax parcels that have a less than 5% overlap with your properties. Property boundaries don't always align with tax parcels, so this will help reduce unwanted noise.
Are you a Focus customer who's interested in Alerts? Now is a great time to upgrade with our end-of-year $1000 discount on Lens Plus. Are you a Plus customer looking to get more out of Alerts? See the article I wrote for you here.
With the addition of Planet’s new carbon and canopy datasets, monitoring and reporting on your forest projects in Lens has never been easier. In this webinar, we explore Planet’s new 30m Forest Carbon Diligence product, which includes canopy height, canopy cover, and aboveground carbon going back to 2013. Watch the webinar from December 14th here. Also be sure to check out Abby's great blog post about how Lens can help with digital MRV.
Watch Katie's recent webinar with Impact Observatory introducing Custom Land Use Land Cover (LULC) change maps, which enable decision makers to understand risks and anticipate change in near-real-time. These maps cover any area of interest, over user-specified time periods, from 2018 to the present. Covering 14 LULC classes, this dataset is ideal for understanding, tracking and assessing change.
Interested in Lens Plus? Now's a great time to upgrade while we're running a $1000 discount on Lens Plus annual plans. Lens Plus includes vegetation drop alerts, parcel ownership data, parcel owner alerts, streaming of commercial imagery into GIS, and more. See our article about Plus features here. Curious to learn more? Reach out to us at lens@upstream.tech.
Know of another organization that would benefit from Lens? Between now and the end of the year, if you refer them to Lens and they mention that upon signup, you will receive a $750 account credit. If you have any questions, reach out to us at lens@upstream.tech.
Like what you're reading and want to be more involved? We're hiring for several positions and also have an Open Call for applications if you have something in mind.
'Tis the season for millions of pine trees to become Christmas trees, thus beginning their temporary migration indoors. Check out this farm in Oregon where you can see the growth of thousands of seedlings. Also notice how share links, like the one above, can now take you to a particular part of a property. If you're interested in the environmental implications of real vs. fake Christmas trees, check out The Nature Conservancy's article here.
Check out the rest of our knowledge base to learn more about working in Lens, and know that you can always reach us at lens@upstream.tech with any questions.
Happy Monitoring!
Miles & the Lens Team
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