Glossary
The terms behind 1 m Sentinel-2 imagery, defined once
Every acronym, format and billing unit used across GammaEarth pages, with the meaning it carries here. Link to any entry by its anchor.
- AOIArea of interest
- The area you ask to be processed, submitted with one or more dates. Credits are drawn by its area, per date, at the rate of the pricing region it lies in.
- APIApplication programming interface
- The GammaEarth REST API: submit processing jobs and retrieve output programmatically. See the API documentation.
- Archive
- Every Sentinel-2 scene already acquired. S2DR super-resolves Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B scenes back to 2018, so a baseline can be drawn from before a project began.
- Cloud mitigation
- Removing haze, clouds and cloud shadows from a scene so the surface beneath stays usable. It is what S2DR4 adds to S2DR3.
- COGCloud-optimised GeoTIFF
- A GeoTIFF laid out so a client can read only the part it needs over HTTP. S2DR output is COG ready.
- Credit
- The unit S2DR3 and S2DR4 are billed in, from a single balance regardless of model or delivery method. One credit processes 1 km2 per date in Region A, 1.33 km2 in Region B and 2 km2 in Region C. See pricing.
- CSRDCorporate Sustainability Reporting Directive
- The European Union directive that sets what large companies must disclose about their sustainability impact.
- Deep Resolution
- GammaEarth's name for its approach: resolving imagery not only in space, but across spatial, spectral and semantic detail, from the sensor up to the data product.
- EUDREU Deforestation Regulation
- The European Union regulation that requires evidence that listed commodities were not produced on land deforested after its 31 December 2020 cutoff.
- GeoTIFF
- A TIFF image that carries its own georeferencing. S2DR output is 16-bit multiband GeoTIFF that loads in QGIS, ArcGIS or any raster pipeline as delivered.
- GSDGround sample distance
- The distance on the ground between the centres of two adjacent pixels. S2DR output is delivered at 1 m/px GSD, from Sentinel-2 input at 10 m and 20 m.
- IRPInfra-red pseudo-colour
- A composite that renders near infra-red as a visible colour, so vegetation stands out from bare ground and built surfaces. One of the derived 3-band S2DR outputs.
- L2ALevel-2A
- Sentinel-2's surface reflectance product, corrected for the atmosphere. Every GammaEarth output derives from a public L2A scene with a known acquisition date.
- MRVMeasurement, reporting and verification
- The evidence cycle a carbon project runs for its verifier. dMRV is the same cycle built on digital data such as satellite imagery.
- Multispectral
- Imagery recorded in several spectral bands at once, including wavelengths beyond visible colour. The 10-band S2DR product is multispectral; its RGB composite is not.
- NDVINormalised difference vegetation index
- A vegetation index computed from the red and near infra-red bands. At 1 m it places stress within a field rather than averaging it into a 10 m pixel. S2DR delivers it as a derived composite.
- NIRNear infra-red
- The wavelengths just beyond visible red. Healthy vegetation reflects them strongly, which is why NIR bands respond to crop vigour.
- Pricing region
- One of three groups — A, B and C — that every country and territory falls into. The region sets how much area one credit covers there. Look up a country.
- Red edge
- The narrow range between red and near infra-red where vegetation reflectance rises sharply. Sentinel-2's red edge bands respond to crop vigour and are delivered at 1 m with the rest.
- Revisit
- How often a satellite images the same place again. Sentinel-2 revisits every location every five days, so a new scene of any area of interest is available at that cadence.
- S2DRSentinel-2 Deep Resolution
- GammaEarth's family of deep-learning models, also written S2DRx, that super-resolve Sentinel-2 imagery from 10 m to 1 m across all 10 spectral bands. It comes as two models, S2DR3 and S2DR4.
- S2DR3
- The S2DR model for the sharpest results, best for clear skies. It super-resolves all 10 Sentinel-2 bands to a uniform 1 m in a single pass.
- S2DR4
- Everything in S2DR3, plus automated cloud, haze and shadow removal — the model for maximum usability, reliable even in cloudy conditions.
- SDKSoftware development kit
- The GammaEarth Python package that runs super-resolution and writes output in your own environment. Requires Linux x86-64, Python 3.12 and a CUDA GPU.
- Sentinel-2
- The Copernicus Earth observation mission of the European Space Agency (ESA). It images the whole land surface of the planet every five days, and its data is free to use — the input every GammaEarth product starts from.
- Spectral band
- One range of wavelengths a sensor records as its own image layer. S2DR output carries all 10 of Sentinel-2's 10 m and 20 m bands, processed jointly so they stay radiometrically consistent with each other.
- Super-resolution
- Reconstructing finer spatial detail than a sensor recorded. S2DR does it with deep learning, reconstructing real detail rather than interpolating between pixels.
- SWIRShort-wave infra-red
- Infra-red wavelengths longer than NIR. Sentinel-2's SWIR bands respond to moisture in soil and canopy.
- TCITrue colour image
- The red, green and blue bands rendered as the eye would see them — the RGB composite of an S2DR output.
- UTMUniversal Transverse Mercator
- The map projection S2DR output is delivered in.
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