Earthshot Labs

Climate and ecosystem collapse is the greatest challenge of the century. Global warming intensifies natural disasters, increases geopolitical instability, deepens food insecurity, and threatens livelihoods for more than a billion people worldwide. Currently, land use accounts for more than 24% of GHG emissions, but it could represent more than 65% of the drawdown potential. 

A comprehensive global marketplace for carbon and ecosystem services is essential for scaling land restoration to address the climate crisis and its underlying causes.

Earthshot is developing the first global open-source remote sensing platform for ecosystem monitoring and decentralized verification for carbon credits.

This will expand the market for carbon credits 1000x by decreasing verification cost by 100x, helping to reverse climate change and ecological damage, and transforming the lives of billions of people through increased food security, improved livelihoods, and stabilized societies that form the basis of wealth.

Climate and ecosystem collapse is the greatest challenge of the century. Global warming intensifies natural disasters, increases geopolitical instability, deepens food insecurity, and threatens livelihoods for more than a billion people worldwide. Currently, land use accounts for more than 24% of GHG emissions, but it could represent more than 65% of the drawdown potential. 

A comprehensive global marketplace for carbon and ecosystem services is essential for scaling land restoration to address the climate crisis and its underlying causes. Existing markets have had limited impact because of the following problems:

Expensive Carbon Verification & Low Supply: Less than 1% of land can access the forest carbon market due to the high cost of manual verification, and less than .01% can access markets for soil carbon and other ecosystem services.

Poor Data & Analytics: Even the best existing models of carbon sequestration don’t include advanced machine learning or integrate enough site data for global coverage, and have not been productized for widespread individual and institutional access.

Transparency: Black-box verification methodologies and siloed carbon accounting have undermined trust in implementing nature-based solutions and prevented a coherent global climate strategy.

Earthshot Labs is using the latest remote sensing imagery and crowdsourced field data to create the first global, democratized carbon verification system.

LandOS - Global Ecosystem & Carbon Model

LandOS is our operating system for land management. The first layer is an open-source global map for forest carbon, soil, and hydrological restoration analysis. LandOS calculates the first estimate of carbon sequestration for a parcel, and determines the site data that needs to be collected, either by professional verifiers or the crowdsourced Biome App. We then guide the landowner or project developer through an automated self-verification process that produces a credit on the Regen Ledger. This remote estimation + crowdsourced verification stack enables 1000x greater access to global carbon marketplaces by decreasing barriers to entry for landowners, dramatically reducing verification costs, and the scalability of self-guided verification.

Biome - Crowdsourced Verification

       Think Pokemon Go x USGS

Biome engages the world’s nature enthusiasts to provide crowdsourced, low-cost, scalable training data for the global LandOS carbon model. Biome incorporates gamification and social dynamics to maximize engagement, as well as rewarding contributors with micropayments using the Regen Ledger coin.

You can read more about Biome in our product requirements document.

Rural and idigenous people across the globe should receive the full benefit of their regenerative land stewardship. Our democratized carbon verification, in tandem with the decentralized Regen Ledger, will give market access to the 99.9% of landowners who can’t pay $300,000 for carbon verification, as well as let the stewards on the ground keep the full value of the carbon project, rather than the current average 4%. Ordinary people using the Biome app can earn income for providing site data. Reforestation and agroforestry projects catalyzed by the Earthshot system could employ millions more in regenerative and secure livelihoods. 

We are currently working with indigenous groups throughout Brazil and Latin America to understand the complexity of wealth entering rural communities, and will continue to invite stakeholders to participate in the process of creating this infrastructure to serve ecosystems and stewards.

Resilient ecosystems are the foundation for true wealth, stability, and human thriving on the planet. Earthshot’s mission to build a decentralized carbon verification system and provide scalable monitoring tools will catalyze a regenerative land stewardship economy and agroforestry systems that provide long-term security for marginalized communication around the world. Our world-class open-source community is creating cutting-edge models for forestry carbon, soil carbon, and water restoration, and in the future will build out the LandOS platform to include biodiversity and other crucial ecosystem measurements. Biome will provide foundational training data for our global machine learning models.

Earthshot Labs has gathered a community of more than 700 data scientists, software engineers, and domain experts to complete the open-source scientific research required for a model of global ecosystems including soil carbon, forest carbon, and water restoration. We are just beginning product development on LandOS to give landholders access to this research and enable onboarding into the Regen Ledger carbon blockchain. We will release the Biome citizen science app in the coming month. This initial research is funded by a $256k NSF grant, and we will be expanding product and team beyond this initial grant funding through private investment.

Building the ecosystem verification platform of the future requires two major innovations: a global open-source ecosystem model using remote sensing imagery and machine learning, and crowdsourced site data. The combination of novel basic research on ecosystems, gathering training data for the global model using Biome, and productizing the research into LandOS for landowner carbon verification completes the chain of products needed to catalyze planetary-scale restoration. Creating an accurate map of the world unlocks numerous product verticals for carbon markets, policy making, and driving investment toward regenerative solutions.

Research: Our world class research teams are currently doing cutting-edge research on global ecosystem modeling for forest carbon, soil carbon, and water restoration. 

Check out our NSF-Funded 2021 research plan here

The platform analyzes datasets including GEDI, OCO2, Sentinel-2, Hyde, NAIP, LandSat, Hansen, ISCN, ISRIC-WISE, SOC Perennial, SMAP, ERA5, and MERIT DEM, among others, along with aerial LiDAR and conventional ground-truth data, to accurately map carbon sequestration potential for every land parcel globally. No other group has combined these disparate data sets to get an accurate assessment of above and below ground carbon potential, current carbon stocks, and rate of change. The world-class, multidisciplinary Earthshot AI and data science team is in a unique position to leverage this data for numerous product use cases.

Although currently in development, LandOS and Biome will be massive global catalysts for land restoration.

Biome - Current leading citizen science apps have millions of users; we believe incorporating game dynamics, payments for data collection, and activist messaging for climate action will attract even greater numbers of users.

LandOS: 99.9% of landowners globally can't access carbon markets. We will be unlocking additional revenue and ecological incentives for potentially tens of millions of rural, indigenous, or modern land stewards worldwide.

Project Development: Direct project development in the next five years could employ tens of thousands of tree plants and nursery operations globally. 

0 - Currently Serving (pre-product)

1k-10k - Serving in 1 year

10m-100m - Serving in 5 years

Core metrics:

# of projects validated through LandOS on the Regen Ledger blockchain

# of acres validated through LandOS on the Regen Ledger blockchain

# of Biome users

# of Biome data points collected

# of acres reforested and protected through direct Earthshot project development

Additional Ecosystem Metrics for measuring specific projects and total ecological impact include:

Carbon and Forest Health: Total biomass growth (AGB and BGB), vegetation cover, canopy height

Biodiversity: Total number of species, keystone species population count, canopy height variation

Disaster Risk: Fire Risk (soil moisture, vegetative cover), Flood Reduction (peak surface runoff), Erosion (Vegetative Cover), Storm (Vegetative cover, canopy height)

Soil Health: Total indigenous microorganism (IMO) density, IMO total species count, fungus/bacteria ratio, water holding capacity

Water: Total supply increase, aquifer recharge rate, annual streamflow, total surface runoff

Our team also shares the hypothesis that ecosystems are best protected long-term by community stewardship with high agency; rather than simply separating large areas of land from humans like conventional conservation, we believe regenerative community development and recreation and agroforestry incomes provide conservation security across generations and government regulations.

3 - Full-time

5 - Part-time (Research team leadership)

24 - Volunteers and Contractors

700+ Community Members

Troy Carter and Patrick Leung are co-founders of Earthshot Labs and the main project development leaders. They currently curate a world-class community of 700+ data scientists and domain experts committed to data-driven climate intervention. We strongly believe in the power of multidisciplinary teams to address the entire product cycle of research, technical implementation, and popularization.

Patrick Leung, CTO. Patrick spent 11 years at Google in senior technical engineering roles for products including Duplex (AI and Natural Language Processing), Google Maps, and emerging markets. He was also the Chief Technology Officer at Two Sigma Private Investments where he pioneered the use of data science to drive private equity and impact investing. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/puiwah/

 Troy Carter, CEO. Troy previously co-founded RIZOME, a pioneer in reforestation and bamboo engineered lumber. He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in economics, was an early employee at Airbnb and E la Carte, and founder of Troy Cider. He has focused on renewable energy and agriculture project development for the last six years. https://www.linkedin.com/in/troybear/

Our project leads are experts in carbon biomass estimation, LiDAR imagery interpretation, machine learning for carbon/forestry/land use, hydrological modeling for watershed-level surface/subsurface/aquifer management, soil carbon measurement, and other domains. Many have committed to join Earthshot as full-time employees as needed, though most will remain in the open-source developer community working on the core AI platform or developing tools within the Earthshot ecosystem. 

Earthshot Labs is committed to building systems that work for all of humanity, which intrinsically requires our organization to reflect the people we are serving.

1. Financial: We are committed to using a structure that truly serves the long-term ecological mission and sets a precedent for global stakeholder capitalism. In five years, we want Earthshot to have 100,000 stakeholders across the globe, without the perverse incentives of going public. Employees, citizen scientists, climate activists, and rural landowners should all have the opportunity to financially benefit from climate intervention.

2. Leadership: The Earthshot community is made up of hundreds of members from incredibly diverse backgrounds. We are committed to long-term employing at least 50% women in leadership roles, and prioritizing diversity to best reflect the abundant creativity we need to truly serve humanity in a balanced, grounded way. Our first full-time hires have all been from historically underrepresented groups.

Being a part of the MIT Solver network would provide strong social proof, open access to potential partnerships, and give Earthshot Labs visibility and grow our community presence. 

Earthshot has been built by a global volunteer community, and we see it as a social movement as much as a product company. Spreading the word to potential contributors, funders, customers, and partners is crucial to the success of the mission.

We are currently fundraising, and though we see massive interest, are continually looking for deeply aligned funding partners to grow with us as we expand our team and begin direct project development.

The prize vetting process shows legitimizing support for Earthshot as a primary global data repository for major institutions to back, which is crucial to developing a coherent global cliamte intervention strategy.

The Earthshot technical team is the best in the world, with deep expertise in service care for the planet. Our challenge will be in scaling our verification methodology to customers, gaining market acceptance, and partnering with NGOs, governments, and corporations to support Earthshot as a global open-source standard.

The MIT Solve network would by highly catalytic in supporting partnerships and scaling our presence globally.

We are forming a global consortium of NGOs, governments, multilateral organizations, and companies to establish global standards for carbon and ecosystem modeling, crowdsourced verification, and a decentralized transparent carbon ledger. 

We are currently in conversation with many groups and have established close ties with Eden Reforestation, Regen Network, Climate Farmers, and others, but are looking for deeper social proof to build partnerships within legacy organizations. 

We are also looking to build academic partnerships with leading academic institutions to promote collaboration towards coherent global solutions.

Potential data and credit consortium partners

The Nature Conservancy

Conservation International

WWF

WRI

Indigo Ag

NRCS

USGS

USDA

NASA

Microsoft

Google

Amazon

Verra

Gold Standard

CARB

Stanford Natural Capital Project

UN

Earthshot is committed to addressing global climate change with holistic nature-based solutions. We believe that the climate and ecological crisis must be addressed at the level of cause, rather than just removing CO2 or planting trees as a short-term fix. This requires profound cultural, economic, and systemic restoration.

The Biome app is our contribution to STEM education, citizen science, and engagement with nature. Everyone on earth with a smart phone can play a beautiful game that collects tree and ecological data crucial to our global machine learning models. Individuals in rural areas can get micropayments for measurements that add up to a living wage, while building the scientific education needed for participation in a complex world. 

LandOS will catalyze payments to indigenous and rural communities for regenerative land stewardship through carbon credits, and provide ecological intervention recommendations to build a local ecology that is the foundation of sustainable wealth.

Earthshot is building the infrastructure for scalable nature-based carbon removal, an essential component to address the climate and ecological crisis. LandOS will be a comprehensive operating system for land management, and the first product is remote verification of carbon sequestration for the Regen Ledger blockchain. Biome is an app that makes it easy for everyone on earth to contribute to climate action by collecting training data for our global machine learning model. The earthshot open-source community is becoming a leading research institution that is leading academic work on soil carbon, forest carbon, and water restoration.

Funding from the the ServiceNow prize will go directly into growing our team in both basic carbon sequestration research, as well as productization in LandOS and Biome to catalyze a coherent global climate strategy

Earthshot’s open-source machine learning ecosystem model is a pioneering approach to creating a coherent global climate strategy. Funding from the AI for Humanity Prize will go directly to expanding our research and product teams to scale nature-based climate solutions. Our community of over 700 researchers, academics, software engineers, data scientists, and domain experts has been an incredible experiment in the power of open-source practices and volunteer motivation, and our teams in modeling soil carbon, forest carbon, and water restoration are on the cutting edge of scientific understanding. We are using the latest satellite imagery and ground-truth data with modern machine learning methods to create a global map of how to scale nature-based climate solutions. 

Education: Earthshot is committed to addressing global climate change with holistic nature-based solutions. We believe that the climate and ecological crisis must be addressed at the level of cause, rather than just removing CO2 or planting trees as a short-term fix. This requires profound cultural, economic, and systemic restoration. The Biome app is our contribution to STEM education, citizen science, and engagement with nature. Everyone on earth with a smart phone can play a beautiful game that collects tree and ecological data crucial to our global machine learning models. 

Poverty: With Biome, individuals in rural areas can get micropayments for measurements that add up to a living wage, while building the scientific education needed for participation in a complex world. LandOS will catalyze payments to indigenous and rural communities for regenerative land stewardship through carbon credits, and provide ecological intervention recommendations to build a local ecology that is the foundation of sustainable wealth.

Crypto and technology: Earthshot is building the technical infrastructure for scalable nature-based carbon removal, an essential component to address the climate and ecological crisis. LandOS will be a comprehensive operating system for land management, and the first product is remote verification of carbon sequestration for the Regen Ledger blockchain.