---
license: apache-2.0
tags:
  - earth-observation
  - remote-sensing
  - forest-monitoring
  - climate
  - sentinel-2
  - vision-transformer
  - multi-modal
  - temporal
  - soil-prediction
  - carbon
datasets:
  - sentinel-2
  - global-forest-change
  - openlandmap
language:
  - en
pipeline_tag: image-segmentation
library_name: pytorch
---

# Naturecode Earth

**A Multi-Modal Temporal Vision Transformer for Forest Monitoring and Earth Observation**

Naturecode Earth is a foundation model designed for comprehensive forest monitoring, combining satellite imagery analysis with soil property prediction. Built on a hierarchical vision transformer architecture, it processes multi-temporal Sentinel-2 imagery to provide actionable insights for climate and conservation applications.

## Model Description

Naturecode Earth is a **10.9M parameter** model (nano variant) that processes:
- **Sentinel-2 imagery**: 6 spectral bands (B2, B3, B4, B8, B11, B12) across 4 quarterly timestamps
- **Location encoding**: Latitude/longitude embeddings for geographic context
- **Temporal encoding**: Day-of-year embeddings for seasonal awareness

### Architecture

```
Input: (B, T, C, H, W) = (batch, 4 timestamps, 6 bands, 64, 64)
       + timestamps: (B, T, 2) [year, day_of_year]
       + locations: (B, 2) [lat, lon]

Encoder:
  - Patch embedding (8x8 patches)
  - Factorized temporal + spatial attention
  - 4 transformer layers

Decoder Heads:
  - Segmentation: Forest cover classification (3 classes)
  - Biomass: Above-ground biomass estimation (Mg/ha)
  - Change Detection: Deforestation/degradation mapping
  - Soil Properties: SOC, clay, sand, bulk density, water content
```

## Intended Uses

### Primary Use Cases
- **Forest Cover Mapping**: Classify land into low/medium/high forest cover
- **Deforestation Monitoring**: Detect forest loss and degradation
- **Carbon Stock Estimation**: Estimate above-ground biomass
- **Soil Carbon Prediction**: Predict soil organic carbon content

### Supported Regions
Trained on data from major tropical forest regions:
- Amazon Basin (West, Central, East)
- Congo Basin
- Borneo

## Training Data

| Dataset | Description | Resolution |
|---------|-------------|------------|
| Sentinel-2 SR Harmonized | Surface reflectance imagery | 10m |
| Global Forest Change (Hansen) | Tree cover, loss, gain | 30m |
| OpenLandMap | Soil properties (SOC, clay, sand, bulk density) | 250m |

**Training Configuration:**
- 300 tiles (64x64 pixels at 10m = 640m x 640m)
- 4 quarterly composites per tile (2024)
- 100 epochs on NVIDIA A100

## How to Use

### Installation

```bash
pip install torch rasterio huggingface_hub
```

### Inference

```python
import torch
from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download

# Download model
model_path = hf_hub_download(
    repo_id="naturecodeproject/naturecode-earth",
    filename="model.pt"
)

# Load model
checkpoint = torch.load(model_path, map_location="cpu")
config = checkpoint["config"]

# Your ForestFM model class here
from forestfm.model import ForestFM
from forestfm.config import ForestFMConfig

model_config = ForestFMConfig(**config)
model = ForestFM(model_config)
model.load_state_dict(checkpoint["model_state_dict"])
model.eval()

# Inference
# images: (1, 4, 6, 64, 64) - 4 timestamps, 6 bands, 64x64
# timestamps: (1, 4, 2) - year and day_of_year
# locations: (1, 2) - lat, lon
with torch.no_grad():
    outputs = model(images, timestamps, locations)

    # Forest segmentation
    seg_probs = outputs["segmentation"].softmax(dim=1)

    # Biomass estimation
    biomass = outputs["biomass"]["mean"]

    # Soil properties
    soc = outputs["soil"]["soc"]
    clay = outputs["soil"]["clay"]
```

## Model Outputs

| Output | Shape | Description |
|--------|-------|-------------|
| `segmentation` | (B, 3, H, W) | Forest cover logits (low/medium/high) |
| `biomass.mean` | (B,) | Above-ground biomass (Mg/ha) |
| `biomass.aleatoric_std` | (B,) | Uncertainty estimate |
| `change.change_logits` | (B, 2, H, W) | Change detection logits |
| `soil.soc` | (B,) | Soil organic carbon (g/kg) |
| `soil.clay` | (B,) | Clay content (%) |
| `soil.sand` | (B,) | Sand content (%) |
| `soil.bulk_density` | (B,) | Bulk density (kg/m3) |
| `soil.water_content` | (B,) | Water content at 33kPa (%) |

## Performance

### Segmentation Accuracy
| Metric | Value |
|--------|-------|
| Overall Accuracy | 73.7% (5 epochs, nano) |
| Full Training | 94.4% (100 epochs, A100) |

### Soil Prediction (MAE)
| Property | MAE |
|----------|-----|
| SOC | 0.074 (normalized) |

## Limitations

- **Resolution**: Optimized for 64x64 pixel tiles (640m x 640m at 10m resolution)
- **Temporal**: Best performance with 4 quarterly composites
- **Geographic**: Trained primarily on tropical forests; may need fine-tuning for temperate/boreal forests
- **Cloud Cover**: Relies on cloud-free composites from Google Earth Engine

## Environmental Impact

This model was trained with environmental sustainability in mind:
- Uses spot/preemptible GPU instances to reduce costs and energy
- Efficient nano architecture (10.9M params) suitable for edge deployment
- Supports forest conservation and climate monitoring applications

## Citation

```bibtex
@software{naturecode_earth_2024,
  title={Naturecode Earth: Multi-Modal Temporal Vision Transformer for Forest Monitoring},
  author={Naturecode},
  year={2024},
  url={https://huggingface.co/naturecodeproject/naturecode-earth}
}
```

## License

Apache 2.0

## Acknowledgments

- Sentinel-2 data from ESA/Copernicus
- Global Forest Change from University of Maryland
- Soil data from OpenLandMap/ISRIC
- Google Earth Engine for data processing