Every time we watch the sky, we don’t even think that a myriad of eyes are watching us every second of our lifetime. The name of these eyes is satellites.
They are like the watchful guardians that continuously capture the images of our planet and help us solve the Earth's problems from above. With the help of top-notch sensors, satellites offer a real-time perspective and help us manage the world in many cases, from deforestation and massive floods to planning construction places and protecting animal species from extinction. Numerous governments, scientists, and profitable and volunteer organizations use live satellite imagery to plan and solve issues in their respective environments. Let’s explore how these space observers shape the world around us.
Transforming Agriculture With Current Satellite Images
Covering all the spheres where satellites have the biggest impact, agriculture cannot be ignored. This is the exact ground where all the innovations and cutting-edge technologies are tested and implemented. And satellites are not excluded. Modern agriculture is a high-tech industry that underwent a revolution and enjoys benefits from all the current inventions, from Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things to drones and satellite crop monitoring. Thanks to live view of satellite images, farmers can track soil conditions and crop health, optimize the usage of water and fertilizers, and effectively battle pests. Moreover, satellite technologies allow farmers of any scale to increase productivity and reduce costs:
Soil Health Monitoring: With the help of satellite imagery, farmers can easily detect soil erosion and nutrient deficiencies. With this data, they can apply fertilizers and water resources in those regions of their fields where it is really necessary. This allows them to save resources and minimize the impact on the environment.
Crop Health and Growth Tracking: Using satellite images and vegetation indexes, farmers can easily identify crop health, signs of diseases in the early stages, pest infestation, or any kind of stress, from overheating to water scarcity. This results in a better yield and more money earned.
Resource Management and Timelt Harvesting: Live satellite images allow real-time monitoring of vegetation stages, ensuring that crops are harvested at peak quality with minimum post-harvest losses.
The role of space technologies and current satellite imagery is not a luxury but a necessity for modern farmers. And the numbers speak for themselves. According to the FAO Statistical Yearbook 2024, the production of primary crops reached 9.6 billion tonnes in 2022, marking a 56% increase compared to 2000. Countries with high-tech satellite-based farming (U.S., China, Brazil) have seen the most significant agricultural gains.
Protecting Forests With Current Satellite Imagery
Agriculture’s role in the health of our planet is crucial due to the carbon footprint left by agricultural corporations. But what’s more challenging is the condition of our forests. And yeah, satellite imagery has a significant impact on this sphere as well. In some countries, deforestation is happening on an industrial scale. As a result, we face substantial carbon emissions, accelerating climate change, loss of biodiversity, flooding and landslides, and forcing Indigenous communities to leave their homes, losing a massive layer of authentic culture of the inhabitants of various regions. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it?
Satellite observation provides a game-changing solution, offering large-scale, high-resolution data that allows us to notice the negative impacts in time and support conservation efforts on the Earth more effectively from space:
Detecting Deforestation & Degradation: With the help of live satellite imagery, scientists can notice illegal logging, track land conversion, and detect environmental stress in real time. This allows organizations to react quickly and take quick action to minimize the consequences of deforestation.
Advanced Sensor Capabilities: Using cutting-edge optical and infrared sensors and radar and thermal sensors mounted satellites, scientists can ignore weather conditions and time of day, taking live images for their purposes and providing early warnings for disaster response even in regions with cloud cover.
Time-Series Monitoring: Researchers can take satellite images from any time and date, analyzing and comparing the forest changes over time. Companies that provide satellite analytics usually offer historical data for a better understanding of the ongoing processes.
Satellite imagery combined with AI algorithms allows conservationists to detect illegal deforestation or any signs of forest fires as soon as possible. This gives us the opportunity to preserve the biodiversity of our planet and protect forests for our future generations.
Tracking Climate Change From Space With Satellite Imagery
What unites deforestation and agriculture is their role in climate shaping. Over the decades, human activity has enormously impacted our natural environment. Burning fossil fuels, urbanization, pollution, and industrial waste - all of them bear responsibility for our climate change. Global temperatures have risen 1.2°C since 1880. These changes may not seem so massive, but they lead to more heat waves, storms, and rising sea levels. That reshaped our planet and shifted ecosystems on it. And if we can’t do anything about what has already happened, then it is in our hands to minimize the influence of people here and now with those instruments that we have. Satellites are the exact instruments that can help us monitor changes. With the help of current satellite imagery in any region of the planet, we can track crucial climate indicators such as greenhouse gas concentrations, Sea-level rise, and temperature fluctuations. Scientists and analysts can identify trends, forecast future climate changes, and create strategies to mitigate this impact. Even though climate change cannot be reversed, satellites provide the data needed to reduce emissions and enhance natural carbon sinks, empowering governments and organizations to take effective climate action.
Satellites in Disaster Management: Prediction, Response, and Recovery
Natural disasters do not always happen by themselves. In many cases, they can be provoked by human activities. Such cataclysms as hurricanes, wildfires, and floods can cause devastating damage, washing whole cities and populations from the world map. Satellites are not the magic pill to battle all those catastrophes. But they have definitely revolutionized the way we can predict, monitor, and respond to these events and save lives and nature.
Early Warning and Prediction: One of the most critical applications of current satellite images of Earth is disaster prediction. Meteorologists rely on satellite data to track hurricanes, cyclones, and storms, enabling authorities to issue timely warnings and evacuations. Satellites also monitor environmental conditions like temperature, precipitation, and vegetation moisture to forecast wildfires and floods in at-risk regions. With live satellite images, we can stay ahead of potential catastrophes.
Real-Time Monitoring and Emergency Response: During a disaster, live satellite imagery provides continuous updates on affected areas. For example, infrared satellite images can detect wildfires in remote regions, while radar satellite imagery penetrates clouds to track floodwaters. This data from space guides emergency responders in resource allocation, helping them focus on the areas most in need of intervention.
Post-Disaster Recovery: After the disaster has passed, current Earth satellite images become indispensable for damage assessment. These images help authorities pinpoint affected infrastructure, prioritize relief efforts, and monitor recovery progress. Satellite imagery also aids in long-term disaster preparedness by analyzing trends and improving future response strategies.
Author: Kateryna Sergieieva
Kateryna Sergieieva has a Ph.D. in information technologies and 15 years of experience in remote sensing. She is a scientist responsible for developing technologies for satellite monitoring and surface feature change detection. Kateryna is an author of over 60 scientific publications.