To enhance sustainable development goal research, open up commercial satellite image archives
Observing the Earth with satellites offers clear advantages when it comes to tracking the health of the planet—consistent measurements that can be translated into environmentally relevant estimates, such as carbon, crop productivity, or land use. The resulting information covers large regions, irrespective of administrative boundaries. These measurements also drastically reduce costs compared with on-the-ground data collection efforts. Earth observation (EO) data thereby efficiently deliver timely insights that can directly inform sustainability debates, including with regard to United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the heart of these efforts are open data initiatives linked to the public release of medium- to high-resolution EO image archives, such as Landsat (from the US Geological Survey) or Copernicus data (from the European Space Agency [ESA]). A growing body of scientific literature attests to the important role of EO data in providing timely and accurate information that’s directly relevant to the SDGs (1).
Authors
- Almeida Sitoe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7583-2387)
- Felicia O. Akinyemi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6248-7430)
- David B. Lobell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5969-3476)
- Claudio Persello (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3742-5398)
- Natasha Ribeiro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5369-5905)
- Philippe Rufin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8919-1058)
- Katharina Waha (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8631-8639)
- Esther Shupel Ibrahim (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8258-0931)
- Hannah Kerner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3259-7759)
- Patrick Meyfroidt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1047-9794)
- Sá Nogueira Lisboa (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3513-3036)
- Meha Jain (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6821-473X)
- Michelle Cristina Araújo Picoli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9855-2046)
- Catherine Nakalembe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2213-593X)
- Sherrie Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4618-5675)
- Lyndon Estes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9358-816X)
Institutions
- University of Bern (CH)
- Clark University (US)
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (IT)
- Eduardo Mondlane University (MZ)
- Fund for Scientific Research (BE)
- University of Augsburg (DE)
- University of Michigan (US)
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE)
- National Space Research and Development Agency (NG)
- V. B. Sochava Institute of Geography (RU)
- Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (DE)
- National Research Fund Luxembourg (LU)
- Data & Society Research Institute (US)
- Institute for Sustainability (GB)
- Karlstad University (SE)
- Arizona State University (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- University of Twente (NL)
- UCLouvain (BE)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2025-02-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2410246122
- Citations
- 10
- Primary Topic
- Climate change impacts on agriculture
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 30.27
Funders
- Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique - FNRS
- European Research Council