Our vibrant blue and green planet has grown duller in recent years as it sits underneath a veil of smog. In addition to contributions from humans and businesses, Earth’s ecosystems undergo constant changes all on their own. For instance, flooding or drought after a severe storm can impact vegetation growth in the afflicted environment.
To ensure humans can keep an eye on and lessen the impacts of climate change, San Francisco-based Planet is expanding its environmental data solution across the globe with a new acquisition.
Planet recently acquired Salo Sciences for an undisclosed price. Planet operates a fleet of imaging satellites that provide insights to more than 800 enterprise customers spanning agriculture, forestry, intelligence, education and finance. Its goal is to ensure global change is visible through daily data.
Climate tech company Salo Sciences joins its team with expertise in measuring changes to Earth’s ecosystems. Its platform makes use of satellite data, artificial intelligence and ecological modeling to help its clients remedy climate change and biodiversity loss.
By adding Salo’s solution to its tech stack, Planet wants to further its offerings to help companies quantify carbon stocks, monitor forest change and mitigate climate risks. Building on Planet’s data, Salo generates additional layers of data highlighting changes in conditions like forest carbon levels.
Salo’s team specializes in areas like forest ecology and wildfire risk. The company developed the California Forest Observatory, a monitoring system that provides continually updated views of wildfire hazards and forest health. The tool produces data on tree heights, canopy cover, density and other factors that could fuel wildfires.
Human activity is responsible for the degradation of forest ecosystems across the globe. As much as 10 million hectares of forest area are leveled every year, largely for agricultural expansion, as found by the United Nations. Serving companies that make sure Earth’s ecosystems remain sustainable is a main focus for Planet as these activities increase alongside our population.
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Salo’s analytics and modeling technology, when combined with Planet’s daily scan, are the foundations to enable reliable carbon estimates in forests and to do so at scale,” Will Marshall, Planet’s CEO and co-founder said in a statement. “We’ve worked for years with the Salo team and they are going to be a powerful addition to our product suite helping us leap towards understanding forest conservation and helping us combat biodiversity loss at scale.”
The acquisition, which was first announced in December, closed on January 3. Salo’s team will join Planet’s growing headcount in San Francisco. The newly combined company is currently hiring for several positions across software engineering, company operations and other departments.
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