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Remote Sensing · Machine Learning · Geography

Discovering the world's trees

We combine satellite imagery and deep learning to map trees — their location, cover, biomass, and canopy height — from local to continental scale.

PLANETSCOPE ·  SENTINEL-2  ·  GAOFEN  ·  LANDSAT ·  SKYSAT

THE TEAM

International researchers, one shared vision

Based at the University of Copenhagen and funded by DNRF, ESA, ERC, DFF and Schmidt Sciences. We collaborate with institutions across Europe, Africa and Asia.

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KEY PUBLICATIONS

Science at the forefront

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The first time deep learning was used to map billions of individual trees.

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We summarize our experiences in using deep learning for mapping tree resources.

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We used PlanetScope images to generate 3-m maps on canopy height for all Europe, including both forest and non-forest trees.

We tracked 0.5 billion trees in Indian farmlands over 10 years and found that millions of them had disappeared.

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OUR VISION

How we think about our work

01

HIGHLY DETAILED

We detect and map trees as objects.

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02

HOMOGENEOUS

Multi-sensor fusion ensures temporal and spatial consistency.

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03

LARGE SCALE

Our methods scale seamlessly from a single farm to continental and global extents.

04

LONG TERM

Time series analysis going back 25 years to track change over decades.

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HOW WE WORK

From pixels to trees

Our pipeline fuses multi-resolution imagery with deep learning to extract tree related information at scales that were previously impossible.

  • PlanetScope, Sentinel-2, Landsat, Skysat, Maxar, GaoFen imagery​

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  • Deep learning object detection tools

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  • Tree location, cover, biomass, canopy height outputs

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  • Validation against ground truth and lidar reference data

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Misty Forest Hills

GEOGRAPHIC COVERAGE

Work across all continents

Science Advances · PNAS Nexus

 

 

 

EUROPE

We mapped single trees in Denmark and biomass for trees outside forests across Europe.

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Nature · Nature Climate Change · Nature Ecology · Nature Geosciences · Nature Communications

AFRICA

We mapped tree level biomass for 15 billion trees in the Sahel, 2 million Baobab trees, etc.

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Nature Sustainability · Nature Communications · Nature Cities

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ASIA

We documented a greening over Southern China and also in major Chinese cities, but also found major tree losses in India.

Nature Food · Nature Plants

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GLOBAL

We used PlanetScope to map greenhouses and LVOD to estimate biomass dynamics globally.

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2026 Martin Brandt

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