iStock image, elements furnished by NASA.

At A Glance

iStock image, elements furnished by NASA.

Our Vision

Everyone around the world enjoys a healthy environment and sustainable livelihood because transparency is the norm: polluters know they will be seen and caught, industries have cleaned up their practices, and governments are vigorously enforcing environmental protection.

OUR MISSION

Sharing the view from space to promote conservation for people and the planet.

SkyTruth is a conservation technology nonprofit that inspires people to protect the planet by using satellite imagery, big data, and cutting-edge technology. Together, these tools can reveal environmentally damaging actions and make their impacts visible and measurable.

Since its founding in 2000, countless organizations around the world have used SkyTruth products to hold polluters accountable for harmful activities otherwise hidden from view.

Our Approach

An explosion of satellite and computing technology helps us detect what’s happening on the ground and on the water—anywhere in the world—in near real-time.

In the past, SkyTruth analyzed satellite imagery manually, hunting for telltale signs of environmental harm. Today, with new technologies like machine learning and cloud computing, we are teaching computers to scan thousands of images collected every day. This massively scales image analyses, empowering communities to help minimize or even prevent environmental damage.

Exposing Environmental Harm

As we move forward, we will apply these cutting-edge technologies to more and more of our work, enabling us to cover larger areas of the Earth more frequently. This will make it harder than ever for polluters, poachers, and extractive industries to get away with harming the planet. Further, it will create opportunities for governments and forward-thinking businesses to improve their environmental performance.

Guiding Values

STEWARDSHIP

Nature has intrinsic value, worth protecting for its own sake. At the same time, human health, security, and our long-term survival in a changing climate depend on vibrant and diverse ecosystems that supply us with food, clean air, clean water, and economic opportunity.

INCLUSIVITY

A planet in existential peril requires all hands on deck. The environmental movement will be most successful when everyone is empowered to play a role.

Transparency

TRANSPARENCY

Governments and businesses work better to protect the environment when the consequences of their actions—or lack thereof—are plain for all to see. Better transparency leads to better management and better outcomes.

Scientific Integrity

OPENNESS

We approach our work with a spirit of openness, generosity, and collaboration. We share our experience, expertise, analysis, and outputs for free, giving everyone the power to advance environmental protection.

Openness

SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY

SkyTruth is data-driven and transparent about our sources and methods. Credibility is the foundation that gives our work value.

OPTIMISM

Technology can drive positive change and innovation. When given the opportunity to see environmental damage firsthand, people are more likely to take action.

SkyTruth-Infographic

How SkyTruth turbocharges the work of conservationists, policymakers, journalists, researchers & activists to change the world.

Habitat & Biodiversity

As scientists document an accelerating extinction crisis, more and more remote ecosystems are losing species and habitat to human encroachment. Thanks to rapid growth in satellite data and advances in technology, SkyTruth is tracking activity across the world’s oceans–as well as in the Amazon rainforest, the American West, and elsewhere–using artificial intelligence to point conservationists toward problems and hold wrongdoers accountable.

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Health & Well-being

Policymakers won’t act to protect public health without strong evidence of danger. SkyTruth data, maps, and tools equip stakeholders and policymakers with key information that fills data gaps to protect public health. This works on several fronts: it reveals where environmentally harmful activities occur; provides researchers with credible data; arms advocates with reliable information exposing threats; and tips off journalists to compelling stories. Together, these factors play a major role in alerting government officials and the public.

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Government Performance

Government agencies worldwide suffer from limited resources and inertia; officials can’t be everywhere, and there is reluctance to embrace new approaches. Exponential growth in satellite data and computing enables SkyTruth to equip users, helping them push governments to create stronger laws, oversee environmentally harmful activity, and prosecute criminal behavior. Users can even adopt these new technologies themselves to address environmental threats directly.

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Climate

Fossil fuels remain the greatest threat to Earth’s changing climate, one of the biggest challenges humankind has ever faced. SkyTruth has a 20-year track record documenting the location, extent, and pervasiveness of fossil fuel extraction, illuminating the multiple threats from continued fossil fuel use. Collectively, the recognition and measurement of these impacts creates even more public pressure for a global switch to renewable energy.

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Corporate Evolution

People act differently when they know they are being watched — and so do corporations. As SkyTruth expands its reach, scanning thousands of satellite images a day from around the globe, industries learn they can no longer hide their actions. Take Cerulean, which uses machine learning to automatically track vessels at sea and detect when and where they pollute the ocean. As our partners become increasingly able to hold polluters accountable, illegal activity will diminish.

Global Fishing Watch

With our partners at Google and Oceana, we built Global Fishing Watch to stop overfishing and illegal fishing at sea by using machine learning to map and monitor the world’s commercial fishing fleets.

SkyTruth has more than two decades of experience transforming environmental protection with satellite imagery and analysis.

BP Oil Spill

BP Oil Spill

We were the first to show that the spill from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster was vastly larger than BP and the Coast Guard claimed.This resulted in billions of additional dollars in restoration money to help mitigate the damage.

Taylor Energy Leak

We tracked a 14-year-long chronic oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, which prompted the Coast Guard to finally take effective action by seizing control of the pollution response from the company.

Cerulean

Cerulean deploys satellite surveillance and artificial intelligence to track down polluters at sea and expose the full impact of the oil and shipping industries on our oceans and climate.

SkyTruth seeks to democratize innovations in automated satellite surveillance. We help advocates, researchers, and resource-constrained government agencies hold polluters accountable, improve ocean governance, and amplify action on the climate crisis.

As we ramp up the automation process—and as satellites increasingly survey the remotest seas—Cerulean will detect oil slicks from vessels, offshore oil platforms, and other sources, creating a global map of oil pollution and identifying polluters around the world.

This map displays results from the first six months of operation of Cerulean. White dots are the locations of more than 1,000 oil slicks caused by ships at sea, automatically detected on Sentinel-1 satellite images. Red highlights indicate pollution hotspots in the ocean based on this data.

Verdant

Verdant uses satellite imagery and machine learning to automatically detect changes in landscapes and ecosystems that signify threats to biodiversity and human well-being.

Verdant builds on SkyTruth’s pilot initiatives in the Colorado River Basin and the Amazon. In Peruvian rainforests, Verdant technology is used to detect the early signs of unauthorized mining activity. SkyTruth plans to apply Verdant technology to monitor valuable habitats around the world. As nations commit to protecting 30% of their territories by 2030, Verdant will become an increasingly important tool to monitor and manage large, remote landscapes as well as stave off the extinction crisis.

Verdant analysis of 35-year trend in vegetation (losses shown in orange) in the Verde River watershed of Arizona.

Photos/Credits

Our Vision
Aerial view of Bulga Coal mine, located near Broke NSW Australia, from iStock.

Our Approach
Artist’s rendering of a Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellite, from ESA/ATG medialab.

Exposing Environmental Harm
Grasberg Copper-Gold Mine, Mimika Regency, Papua, Indonesia. Image composite from Google Earth, Maxar Technologies, Landsat/Copernicus, modified by SkyTruth. 

Guiding Values

Stewardship
Yosemite Valley, United States, by Bailey Zindel on Unsplash.

Inclusivity
Photo of SkyTruth staff and interns. 

Transparency
Harmful algal blooms in the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District in eastern Ohio analyzed with the KSU spectral decomposition method. Red indicates high levels of harmful algae.

Openness
SkyTruth Analyst Bjorn Bergman checking satellite AIS data for tracking the squid fleet. Photo by Simon Ager/Sea Shepherd.

Scientific Integrity
Cerulean 12-month results showing slicks associated with four offshore oil platforms in the waters of Trinidad and Tobago. We estimate these platforms are contributing up to 260,000 gallons every year to the chronic oil pollution problem in this area.

Optimism
The SkyTruth team in Shepherdstown, West Virginia in September 2019. Photo by Hali Taylor.

Infographic
Created by Visual Curve for SkyTruth.

Global Fishing Watch
An example of apparent fishing activity shown on the Global Fishing Watch map. Radar detections and a vessel track are visible.

BP Oil Spill
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill – Cumulative Oil Slick Footprint, April 25–July 16, 2010. This graphic shows the cumulative oil slick footprint for the BP / Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the northeast Gulf of Mexico. Created by overlaying all of the oil slicks mapped by SkyTruth on satellite images taken between April 25 and July 16, 2010. Cumulatively, surface oil slicks and sheen observed on satellite images directly impacted 68,000 square miles of ocean—about as big as Oklahoma.

Taylor Energy Leak
A boat monitors the oil sheen from the Taylor Energy leak. Photo by Healthy Gulf.

BP Oil Spill/Taylor Energy Background image
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, FSU Sampling Cruise, taken June 22, 2010. Smoke plumes from spill-response crews gathering and burning oil in the Gulf of Mexico near the site of the leaking Macondo well. Photo taken June 22, 2010. Photo courtesy Dr. Oscar Garcia/Florida State University.

Cerulean
This map displays results from the first six months of operation of Cerulean. White dots are the locations of more than 1,000 oil slicks caused by ships at sea, automatically detected on Sentinel-1 satellite images. Red highlights indicate pollution hotspots in the ocean based on this data.

Verdant
This map, part of an early prototype of Verdant, shows the trend in vegetation coverage and health of the Verde River area for every single 30-meter Landsat pixel. In this example, the pixels shown in deep orange are areas that have experienced statistically significant vegetation loss over the last 35 years, while pixels shown in deep blue are areas that have experienced statistically significant vegetation gain over the same period.