2025-04-08, 19:00–19:04, W - Invite
Boermarke-Zeijen is a 350-year old farmers collective in the North of the Netherlands. The farmer collective
owns 1200 hectares of land and consists of five dairy farms, four arable farms, two mixed farms, and one chicken
farm. The farmers are developing economically and ecologically sustainable farming practices to strengthen soil
fertility and biodiversity at company and regional scale. The soils are sandy with peat patches, which is
representative of the soils of the Netherlands. The farmers producing agricultural crops face subsoil compaction
and soil crusting, leading to decreased infiltration capacity. Some of the dairy farms face phosphate deficiencies.
As part of AI4SoilHealth project, Planet Labs is teaming up with the farmer collective and the regional water
board Noorderzijlvest, to correlate in-situ measurements with Planet’s satellite data products to demonstrate its
value for monitoring and decision making. The farmers have a specific interest in monitoring nutrient fluxes, soil
moisture, land surface temperature and biomass conditions, specifically for the sustainable application of
fertilizer.
The in-situ monitoring network collects location-specific, real-time information about the weather outlook, the
level of surface water and groundwater, the moisture content of the topsoil and the water quality. Legacy data
includes in-situ samples and soil profiles covering a range of soil parameters. A field sampling campaign is
planned in April 2025 to collect the AI4SoilHealth baseline indicators (texture, SOC, pH, CEC, nutrients, density)
and additional indicators (e.g. enzymatic activity, eDNA, Macrofauna, NIR-spectroscopy).
We have used Planet’s high spatial and temporal resolution satellite data [Planet Product] to monitor and
characterize the landscape of Boermarke Zijen, by looking at Vegetation health [PlanetScope, Crop Biomass];
Water balance [Soil Water Content]; Environmental stresses [Land Surface Temperature]; Soil health [Tanager,
Sentinel, PlanetScope] and Above ground carbon [Forest Carbon, Crop Biomass]. With the recent launch of
Planet’s Hyperspectral Mission Tanager, the pilot at Boermarken Zijen will also facilitate investigations into the
feasibility of soil property estimation using spaceborne hyperspectral sensors. Using our satellite data products
in combination with the in-situ sample data, will evaluate the water regime and the potential and effects of
year-round greenery to address some of the challenges that the farmers at Boermarke Zijen are facing.
Lexy Ratering Arntz is product manager Planetary Variables at Planet. She strives to apply Planet's data building blocks and other remote sensing products to monitor - and thereby facilitate - the impact of regenerative farming on European landscapes. She has experience in climate (drought and flood) monitoring and agricultural risk management.
As a Senior Scientist in the Solutions Enablement group at Planet Labs, Piers works at the intersection of earth observation (EO) and machine learning to solve problems in the agricultural monitoring domain. His research interests include the development of EO-ML data infrastructure, and applications that leverage EO time series or the fusion of multiple EO modalities.
Annett Wania holds a PhD in Geography and has 21 years of experience in using geospatial and Earth Observation data for the analysis of the impact of human activities. After obtaining her PhD in Geography from the University of Strasbourg, France, she has been working at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre for 13 years on applications in the environmental and agricultural domain as well as applications on urban environments and disaster management. During the last six years at JRC she was working on satellite-based mapping for disaster management under the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. During her time at the JRC she has transitioned from conducting technical work to managing scientific and technical projects and teams. Since January 2021 she is working at Planet Labs in the Earth Observation Lab, where she is managing a team of six engineers and data scientists which is implementing a number of research and development projects aiming at testing and further developing Planet’s image products for applications in the environmental and agricultural domain (crop classification, phenology, environmental impact of mining activities). In addition to traditional remote sensing methods, the team’s focus is on experimenting with innovative machine learning techniques to extract information from Planet’s high-cadence imagery and multi-modal datasets and define solutions for customers, which help them build new applications based on Planet data.