SkyTruth Alerts
When We Know, You Know
Photo of pipeline explosion, Center Township, PA, taken 2 April 2019. Provided by FracTracker Alliance
SkyTruth Monitor shows you where environmental incidents have recently occurred, particularly for the oil and gas industry. Monitor areas you care about, and get Alerts about environmental incidents in those areas.
This is a fantastic service which provides nearly immediate email notifications of spills, leaks and violations — events that the spillers, leakers and violators would rather not have us know about.
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Get Help
New to Monitor? We’ve got resources to get you started.
Get in Touch
We want to hear from you about how you’re using SkyTruth Monitor! Get in touch at support@skytruth.org.
SkyTruth intern Tatianna Evanisko tracks polluting vessels around the world from the SkyTruth offices in Shepherdstown WV. Photo credit: Johnna Armstrong.
Questions about SkyTruth Monitor
Is there a fee to use SkyTruth Monitor?
Anyone can use SkyTruth Monitor for free. It was funded and developed to be used by individuals and organizations working to protect the environment. If you happen to be using SkyTruth Monitor for commercial purposes, we’d really appreciate you making a donation to help us cover costs. 🙂
Do I need to create an account to use Monitor?
Anyone can view the SkyTruth Monitor map without creating an account. You can move around the map, look at recent reports, and filter the types of Alerts you see by type and date. However, if you want to receive email notifications, save your areas of interest (AOIs) to make monitoring easier, annotate and mark up a map, or create issue maps to share with other people, etc., you will need to sign up for a free account.
What types of Alerts can I receive?
A list of available Alerts can be found here.
How do I receive alerts for the Areas I’m interested in?
There are three steps to signing up to receive email Alerts:
- create an account
- create an area of interest
- select which types of Alerts you want to be notified about
We have a quick start guide to get Alerts for your county that you can use as a starting point.
Can you add additional alert types to SkyTruth Monitor?
We’re very interested in adding new types of Alert-worthy information to SkyTruth Monitor, in particular state environmental agency notifications and information for other countries. Please email us or fill out a request form if you know of a source that makes its data publicly available by providing any one of these:
- A website that allows us to “scrape” the data
- A spreadsheet we can download
- An API that allows us public access.
How do I view satellite imagery?
Find out how to do that here.
Where does the satellite imagery come from?
Currently the main source of satellite imagery in Monitor comes from the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites in the European Union’s Copernicus Program. SkyTruth uses Sentinel Hub, a platform for handling and delivering satellite data, to make the imagery available in Monitor. (You can also browse and download satellite imagery directly from the Hub using the EO Browser.)
Imagery from Sentinel Hub is made up of a mosaic of scenes based on zoom level, the size and location of your area of interest (AOI), and the imagery available. If your AOI is small, chances are the image will be from a single scene. However, for larger AOIs the satellite image you see is created from several stitched-together scenes, which may or may not be from the same date. For this reason, we include the date of the imagery on top of each scene so it’s clear what’s being presented.
When you select a map date, the corresponding scene for that date may only represent a small part of your AOI. Sentinel Hub will back-fill the rest of your map view with the most recent imagery available, regardless of cloud cover.
In some cases, especially for very large AOIs, the scenes presented might even change based on zoom level. This is because Sentinel Hub’s image vault may not have the same view available for each zoom level.
Can I add outside data to my map?
We have added several data sets that we find useful in-house to the Layers tab. If you have an idea for other layers that can be helpful to environmental and conservation organizations, email us a link describing the data. Or fill out a request form.
You can also add your own layers and save them for later use.
How can I find out the name, ID, exact location of an oil and gas well in each state?
In most cases, data obtained from state agencies includes a unique ID called the Well API number. You can use this number to find out more information, including the name of the well, at agency websites (for example, the Pennsylvania DEP).
To find the Well API number:
- Click on an Alert icon to open the report info window.
- Click View Full Report at the top of the window.
- In the lefthand sidebar, look for the Well API Number. (You may have to scroll to see it.)
Once you know the Well API number, you can use the keyword search to find other Alerts for the same well:
- Check the boxes next to the types of Alerts you want to see.
- Copy and paste (don’t type) the Well API Number into the Keyword Search (Alerts tab).
- Click the Search icon.
Can I export or download Alerts data?
Yes, you can view a table of Alerts and/or download up to 20,000 Alerts in several file formats (KML, CSV, GeoJSON). Select the Alerts icon, select the Alerts you want to see, then click the table icon to the right of “100 most recent alerts.”
What happened to flaring summaries?
SkyTruth’s flaring map has heatmap and volume information. Our current license does not permit us to share the underlying data used in these maps. To access VIIRS Nightfire and other flaring data, please see the original data provider, Earth Observation Group.
Your alerts make a huge difference on my ability to protect the Basin. Thank you!
SkyTruth Monitor is available to everyone, thanks in part to these funders
The Campbell Foundation
Catena Foundation
Cornell Douglas Foundation
The Heinz Endowments
Patagonia
The Tilia Fund
Wallace Genetic Foundation
Success Story
We used SkyTruth Monitor to document the continuing Taylor Energy spill, which was highlighted in Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, and ultimately resulted in major fines and the containment of a 14-year-old leak.
