Change is the only constant, which isn't news to a Lens user who may be observing trends in California's snowpack or the encroachment of junipers into sagebrush habitat. But change comes in many forms, and often in administrative ways, like property boundary adjustments. While a bit tedious, property boundary updates often represent exciting milestones: a project expansion protecting additional acreage, or a widened monitoring scope that will take into account more of an ecosystem.
As you'll read below, we are excited to announce that your properties can now be updated directly in Lens, allowing you to quickly add and update properties yourself. Read on for more details and other exciting changes in Lens.
The Lens home page has been refreshed! You can now see properties assigned to you, recent activity from notes, alerts, and imagery availability, and all of your portfolios at a glance.
Say goodbye to the days of emailing me your property boundary updates! With our new Update Properties tool, you can handle most of these existing property updates yourself. Click on the tool from the top right corner of the property list page, and then select a file you'd like to use for the update. You will see the change in acreage and any new properties included in the update. For more information about updating properties yourself, see our support article here.
Plus and Enterprise Plans
Our new Parcel Owner Reports make it easy to compile information about US tax parcel ownership for your Lens properties in a streamlined, organized way. These reports will include ownership information and parcel ID numbers for the tax parcels within and contiguous to your properties in Lens.
Lens Plus and Enterprise customers can navigate to the bottom of the Details pane to generate a Parcel Owner Report. For more details, see our support article here.
Created by Impact Observatory and Vizzuality, this data layer depicts the intactness of biodiversity globally for the years 2017-2020 at a 100-meter resolution. This dataset can help identify areas of critical remaining intact habitat and help support spatial planning and management. Navigate to your Lens Library to add the layer to your account, and see our support article for more details.
We are transitioning to automatic billing, and will be using your credit card or ACH information on file for payments moving forward. To update your billing information, head over to your Billing and Contracts page in Lens, where you can now easily edit your billing information on file. For more information about payments, see our support article here. As always, feel free to contact our team if you have questions.
We're thrilled to announce a special nonprofit offer for Planet Basemaps through Lens! When you add a monthly or annual Planet Basemaps subscription in the Lens Library, you can now get 50% off with the code BASEMAPNGO50. This discount is exclusive to Lens customers and is a better deal than you can get anywhere else. These 4m pan-sharpened mosaic scenes are available automatically on every single Lens property every month, meaning you never need to wonder whether you'll have recent data available to order. Any questions? Reach out to us.
Curious to learn more about how parcel data and satellite imagery can streamline your workflow? Check out our new piece here. Whether you're monitoring, scoping project development opportunities, or establishing landowner relationships, Lens Plus and Enterprise comes with the right parcel data tools for the job.
Learn about how Stephanie Strickland, Conservation Easement Program Manager at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF), uses Lens to monitor thousands of conserved acres across the United States. See our article about RMEF's monitoring and reporting at scale here.
Any idea what river is shown here in South America? Using Lens's measure distance tool, we can see the whopping scale of the river - over two miles wide in this particular section. Take a guess - winner gets a shoutout in our next feature release.
Do you have multiple nearby properties that you would like to combine for easier reporting? Consider creating a multi-location property. Multi-location properties are individual locations that share a common property name. Each location can have its own location name (ex: Northern Parcel, etc). When you generate a report, you can choose between including all parcels or a single parcel. Multi-location properties can help organize nearby parcels that are part of the same project or affiliated with the same landowner.
To learn more about multi-location properties and how to create them, see our support 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
