December Newsletter: Waving goodbye to 2023

As we round the final bend of 2023 and look ahead to 2024, our team is recognizing all the changes that we experienced this year. We celebrated new team members, new customers, and exciting new product updates. We welcomed new investors and expanded our relationship with existing partner organizations. We’re thrilled for the next chapter, and to welcome these new partners on our mission to accelerate the pace, scale, and impact of environmental work around the globe.

But before the clock strikes midnight on 2024, read on for some exciting updates from Lens and HydroForecast!

Lens

The latest news from Lens. Questions? Email us at [email protected] .

New Layer in the Lens Library: Chlorophyll (S2)

Lens is a fantastic tool for identifying non-point sources of water pollution. Like using 3D mode and the Vegetation dataset to spot clearcuts, or the USGS Flowlines overlay and high-res imagery to spot areas at risk of manure runoff. Moving downstream, you can now use Lens to monitor algae blooms in bodies of water with the new Chlorophyll S2 Index Layer. In conjunction with our Analyze Area tool, you can understand seasonal trends, outlier bloom events, and more.

Want to see an example? Check out a bloom from this past summer via this share link . Head over to the Lens Library to add this layer to your account .

Share Link Descriptions

See something in Lens that you'd like to share with the world, like that algae bloom in the example above? Try our Share Link feature ! We've just added the option to include a text description so you can provide narrative and context for your audience. Click this example here for more details.

Vegetation and Parcel Owner Alert Updates

Available for Lens Plus and Enterprise

Our Parcel Owner and Vegetation Alerts are powerful tools for passively monitoring activity and ownership within your properties. We've made a couple recent changes to reduce noise and increase the quality of alerts you receive. For Vegetation Alerts, you will no longer receive alerts for the buffer areas surrounding your properties. And for Parcel Owner Alerts, we will exclude tax parcels that have a less than 5% overlap with your properties. Property boundaries don't always align with tax parcels, so this will help reduce unwanted noise. ?

Are you a Focus customer who's interested in Alerts? Now is a great time to upgrade with our end-of-year $1000 discount on Lens Plus.

Catch Up on the Latest Video Content

• Exploring Planet's Global-scale Forest Carbon Diligence in Lens. With the addition of Planet’s new carbon and canopy datasets, monitoring and reporting on your forest projects in Lens has never been easier. In this webinar, we explore Planet’s new 30m Forest Carbon Diligence product, which includes canopy height, canopy cover, and aboveground carbon going back to 2013. Watch the webinar here .
• Diving Into Custom Landcover Data from Impact Observatory. Watch our recent webinar with Impact Observatory introducing Custom Land Use Land Cover (LULC) change maps, which enable decision makers to understand risks and anticipate change in near-real-time. These maps cover any area of interest, over user-specified time periods, from 2018 to the present. Covering 14 LULC classes, this dataset is ideal for understanding, tracking and assessing change.

Don't Miss These End of Year Deals

1. Discount on Lens Plus for existing Focus customers.Interested in Lens Plus? Now's a great time to upgrade while we're running a $1000 discount on Lens Plus annual plans. Lens Plus includes vegetation drop alerts, parcel ownership data, parcel owner alerts, streaming of commercial imagery into GIS, and more. See our article about Plus features here . Curious to learn more? Reach out to us at [email protected] .
2. Lens Referral ProgramKnow of another organization that would benefit from Lens? Between now and the end of the year, if you refer them to Lens and they mention that upon signup, you will receive a $750 account credit. If you have any questions, reach out to us at [email protected] .

Hot Tip??? from Miles van Blarcum, Lens Customer Success Lead

Did you know that you can analyze the polygon of a note with just a click? Select the three dots next to a note, and you can open up Analyze Area. In the Christmas Tree Farm example below, I'm using the polygon from a previous note to analyze for changes in Planet's Aboveground Carbon 30m Diligence Data.

HydroForecast

The latest news from HydroForecast. Questions? Email us at: [email protected] .

As we quickly approach the end of 2023, we have taken some time to reflect on how HydroForecast has grown this year. Check out a few fun stats from the year, and stay tuned for our official HydroForecast wrapped!

• HydroForecast is live on five continents and 14 countries.
• In hydropower, one of our largest markets, HydroForecast is being used to operate a total of 10,015 MW, an increase of 1,271 additional MW of energy compared to the start of 2023. That’s enough energy to power 10 million homes!
• We celebrated a 97% customer renewal rate this year.

Catch Up on the Latest Video Content

In a new virtual series, we break down how machine learning differs from conceptual models, how it applies to hydrology, and walk you through our theory-guided machine learning approach. Brush up on AI and neural networks with these quick videos , and catch the follow-up Q&A session with teammates Laura Read and Eliza Hale.

A Sneak Peek into What We Have Planned for 2024

• A new short-term model is on the way! Our team has implemented a novel method for integrating input data that varies in time horizon, which adds resilience to HydroForecast’s production workflow during times of weather outages.
• More seasonal forecast improvements! We know it’s important to view projected water supply over a key period of time, so new visualizations will include flexibility in dates that users can define.
• A California?statewide public historical streamflow dataset.

Where on Earth?

'Tis the season for millions of pine trees to become Christmas trees, thus beginning their temporary migration indoors. Check out this farm in Oregon where you can see the growth of thousands of seedlings. Also notice how share links, like the one here, can now take you to a particular part of a property in Lens. If you're interested in the environmental implications of real vs. fake Christmas trees, check out The Nature Conservancy's article here .

That's all for now! Want to ensure that you're the first to receive these updates straight to your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter here and you'll never miss an update.

Cheers,

The Upstream Tech team