# Degraded land mapping

Last updated: 2026-10-18

> Map grass and bare ground against trees and shrubs on recent high-resolution imagery, starting from canopy height, and correct it by placing points on the map. A pilot, tested in Panama.

Where on this property is the land open, grass and bare ground, and where are trees and shrubs? Open land is where to look for planting sites. The analysis classifies recent high-resolution imagery, starting from canopy height, and you can refine it by placing points on the map marking land as degraded or forest.

**Pilot, tested on properties in the Azuero region of Panama.**

## Who it is for

- **Carbon project developers.** Estimate the land open for ARR planting from recent imagery, with outlines you can check in the field.
- **Planting and field teams.** Outline the patches to plant, and correct the map point by point where you know the ground.
- **Restoration organizations and funders.** Show where open land sits on a property before the work starts.

## What goes in

A property boundary as a polygon, and these settings:

| Setting | Default | Range |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Points a person placed on the map, each labelled degraded or forest. | None |  |
| Esri Wayback release to analyze. Reruns keep the release of the run they refine. | Set per run |  |
| Satellite embedding year for a regional starting map. Reruns keep the year of the run they refine. | Set per run |  |
| Start from canopy height before any points are added. | On |  |
| Smallest degraded patch kept on the map, in hectares. | 0.1 | 0 or more |
| Largest forest gap inside degraded land that is filled, in square meters. | 100 | 0 or more |

## Data sources

- [Esri World Imagery Wayback](https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/), by Esri. Spatial resolution: Tiles of about 0.6 m; the source imagery’s own resolution varies by place. Temporal resolution: A release about every month since February 2014. Coverage: Global. License: [Esri terms of use](https://www.esri.com/en-us/legal/terms/full-master-agreement). The newest release unless you pick another; each run reports the release and, when available, the capture dates.
- [Meta and WRI Global Canopy Height Map v2 (CHMv2)](https://registry.opendata.aws/dataforgood-fb-forestsv2/), by Meta, World Resources Institute. Spatial resolution: About 1.2 m. Temporal resolution: One snapshot, from imagery captured 2017–2020 (about 80% of it 2018–2020). Coverage: Global. License: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Read at its native resolution, without resampling. Cite: [Brandt et al. 2026, arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06382).
- [Google Satellite Embedding V1 (AlphaEarth Foundations)](https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/GOOGLE_SATELLITE_EMBEDDING_V1_ANNUAL), by Google, Google DeepMind. Spatial resolution: 10 m. Temporal resolution: Yearly, 2017–2025. Coverage: Land and shallow water worldwide. License: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Context for the regional model in Azuero, Panama. Cite: [Brown et al. 2025, arXiv](https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.22291).

## What you get

- Hectares and share of degraded land and forest on the property.
- Outlines of degraded land, with patches under 0.1 ha removed and small forest gaps inside filled.
- The imagery release and capture dates the map was made from.
- In Azuero, the land likely to be planted, with groups of trees taken out.

### Map layers

- **Degraded land.** Grass and bare ground mapped on high-resolution imagery, after small patches are removed.
- **Imagery used.** The Esri Wayback imagery this analysis classified. Turn it on when placing points so they match.
- **Reforestable.** Open land worth planting, as marked by the Degraded Land model, with groups of trees taken out.

## Limits

- A pilot. The regional model is trained in Azuero, Panama; elsewhere it starts from canopy height alone, so expect to place more points.
- Trees that drop their leaves in the dry season can read as degraded, and seasonal woodland such as miombo is not reliable yet.
- Capture dates vary across a property and can be older than the imagery release; each run reports them when the imagery service provides them.
- Up to about 500 ha of bounding box per run; long or fragmented boundaries can hit the limit sooner.
- It maps what the imagery shows. Whether land counts as degraded under a standard or national rule is a separate check.

## Where it fits

Run it once a property is a likely candidate, after forest cover history and land structure, and before planting design. Field teams correct it with points, and the outlines go to the map and the field app for planning.

## Related data layers

- Meta/WRI Global Canopy Height v2: Estimated top-of-canopy height from 2017–2020 imagery at about 1.2 m resolution for canopy structure and forest screening.
- Nature Trace Forest Typology 2020: Global 10 m 2020 forest typology shown as the most likely class: primary, naturally regenerating, planted, plantation, tree crops and agroforestry, or other land.
- ESA WorldCover: ESA’s 2021 global 10 m land-cover map, classifying tree cover, shrubland, grassland, cropland, built-up areas, wetlands, water, and other surfaces.

## Tools and guides

- [How to track tree planting and survival across many sites](https://restorationscope.com/blog/track-tree-planting-survival)
- [Software for ARR carbon projects](https://restorationscope.com/blog/arr-carbon-monitoring-software)
- [Monitoring that funders and carbon investors trust](https://restorationscope.com/blog/restoration-monitoring-system-funders)

## Questions teams ask

### How do my points improve the map?

Each point marks a spot as degraded or forest. The model counts your points far above its starting labels and reruns on the same imagery release, so each correction is compared like for like.

### Which imagery does it use?

The newest Esri World Imagery Wayback release, read on tiles of about 0.6 m, unless you pick an older one. Each run reports the release and, when available, the capture dates.

### Does it run outside Panama?

Yes, from canopy height and your points. The regional model, which adds context from satellite embeddings, exists for Azuero only; other regions need their own training data.

### Is degraded land the same as eligible land?

No. It shows open land on recent imagery. Eligibility also depends on the land’s history, your standard’s rules and what you can confirm in the field.

More: [All analyses](https://restorationscope.com/analyses). Book a call: https://cal.com/bernat/restoration-scope-initial-call