Reproducible satellite analysis
Orbital Earth Observation Platform
How has vegetation health changed at a given place over time, based on Sentinel-2 satellite observations?
Orbital computes the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) from Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery over areas of interest you choose — vegetation health and burn severity, measured the same auditable way — producing per-scene statistics, before/after imagery, and a complete provenance record for every run. Each analysis is fully reproducible: the scenes considered, the pixels masked, and the software versions used are all recorded and downloadable.
It was built around Southeast Michigan and still calls it home — the demonstration analysis lives there — but the pipeline runs anywhere Sentinel-2 observes, roughly 56°S to 83°N. Fifteen curated regions ship with it — four in Michigan, six more spanning Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and five documented wildfire burn scars for pre/post-fire analysis.
System status
Method
How it works
1 · Measure vegetation — or burn severity
Healthy vegetation strongly reflects near-infrared light and absorbs red light. NDVI captures that contrast:
NDVI = (NIR − Red) / (NIR + Red)
Values range from −1 to +1. Dense, healthy vegetation typically scores 0.6–0.9, sparse vegetation and bare soil sit lower, and water is negative.
For fire-affected areas, NBR contrasts near-infrared with shortwave-infrared instead:
NBR = (NIR − SWIR2) / (NIR + SWIR2)
Char and ash reverse the contrast healthy canopy shows, so burning lowers NBR — a drop between two dates is the signature of increased burn severity.
2 · Observe from orbit
The ESA/Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission images land surfaces at 10 m resolution in the red and near-infrared bands, revisiting mid-latitudes roughly every 5 days.
Orbital reads atmospherically corrected surface reflectance (Level-2A) directly from the Microsoft Planetary Computer STAC catalog — only the raster windows covering your area are fetched.
3 · Mask, aggregate, record
Clouds, cloud shadows, and snow are masked using the Sentinel-2 Scene Classification Layer (SCL) before any statistic is computed.
Per-scene index statistics form a time series, and every step — scene selection, mask policy, software versions — is captured in a downloadable provenance document.
Curated regions
Where it looks
Michigan — home ground
Southeast Michigan Demonstration Region — suburban Oakland County, and the subject of the committed demonstration analysis.
Detroit Urban Core — dense impervious surface against parks and street trees.
Sleeping Bear Dunes Shoreline — bare sand, water, and vegetated dune side by side.
Hartwick Pines Forest — conifer cover, whose seasonal cycle is damped next to deciduous stands.
Global — four more continents
Nile Delta Farmland (Egypt) — irrigated cropland meeting desert; three Sentinel-2 tiles mosaicked into one grid.
Amazon Deforestation Frontier (Brazil) — the “fishbone” of roads and clearings against intact canopy.
Central Valley Cropland (California) — neighbouring irrigated fields at opposite NDVI extremes on the same day.
Okavango Delta (Botswana) — a flood pulse arriving months after the rains that caused it.
Mekong Delta Rice (Vietnam) — two to three crops a year, so NDVI cycles several times within one.
Doñana Wetlands (Spain) — a Mediterranean marsh drying through summer beside irrigation that does not.
Wildfire — documented burn scars
Park Fire Burn Scar (California) — mixed conifer and chaparral between Mill Creek and Deer Creek, burned in July 2024 on the fire’s run from Chico toward Lassen Volcanic National Park.
Evia Burn Scar (Greece) — Aleppo pine and maquis on northern Evia, swept coast to coast over ten days in August 2021.
Longwood Burn Scar (Victoria, Australia) — eucalypt foothill forest in the Strathbogie Ranges, burned in January 2026 as the Longwood fire ran southeast from the Hume Highway.
El Hoyo Burn Scar (Chubut, Argentina) — Andean-Patagonian forest of the Epuyén valley, burned in the January 2026 Patagonian fire emergency.
Ávila Burn Scar (Castilla y León, Spain) — pine forest and scrub on the northern slopes of the Sierra de Gredos, burned in July 2026 by the largest wildfire in Spain’s recorded history.
All five lie fully inside their fire perimeters with strong pre/post-fire NBR contrast, verified against real Sentinel-2 coverage before seeding.
Most curated regions cover between 120 and 160 km², so processing cost is comparable between them. You can also draw your own area anywhere Sentinel-2 observes — its orbit images land between roughly 56°S and 83°N, so the poles and the open ocean are out of reach.
Recent analyses
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