Frequently Asked Questions

What is Archaster?

Archaster is a nature intelligence platform that combines satellite imagery, deforestation monitoring, biodiversity assessment, and surface water analysis with AI-powered interpretation. It is designed for procurement teams, sustainability leads, product designers, and researchers who need to understand the ecological condition of sourcing regions and make evidence-based decisions. A typical site assessment takes approximately 30 seconds.

What can I do with Archaster?

Draw or upload a location polygon, select a date range, and Archaster retrieves and analyzes: satellite vegetation indices (6 spectral measures), deforestation alerts with buffer zone analysis, biodiversity records categorized by ecological function, surface water patterns over 40 years, and ecoregion context. The AI then synthesizes this into a cited, role-adapted analysis.

What satellite vegetation indices does Archaster support?

Six spectral indices from Sentinel-2 at 10m resolution: NDVI (plant health), EVI (dense canopy), NDWI (water detection), NDMI (moisture content), SAVI (sparse vegetation), and NBR (burn severity). Each includes statistical summaries for any drawn area.

How does Archaster monitor deforestation?

Near-real-time alerts from Global Forest Watch, combining GLAD, RADD, and GLAD-S2 detection systems. Automated buffer zone analysis at 500m and 2km radii reveals encroachment patterns — when surrounding alerts exceed site alerts, the area is flagged as intact but threatened. Coverage is tropical regions between 30°N and 30°S.

How does the biodiversity assessment work?

Archaster queries GBIF for species records at the site boundary, 2km, and 10km radii, categorizing species into 9 functional groups: apex predators, large herbivores, primary pollinators, specialist pollinators, soil engineers, aquatic species, plant ecosystem engineers, animal ecosystem engineers, and keystone species. Functional gaps may indicate ecosystem degradation.

What is the surface water analysis?

40 years of surface water data (1984–2021) from EC JRC at 30m resolution. Three layers: occurrence (% time water present), seasonality (months per year), and transitions (permanent, seasonal, lost, new). Lost categories signal hydrological degradation.

Can Archaster analyze multiple sites at once?

Yes. Batch upload supports hundreds of supplier polygons for portfolio-level analysis with aggregated KPIs, site-specific alerts, and quarterly change tracking.

How does the AI analysis work?

The AI receives full geospatial context — vegetation stats, deforestation counts with buffer breakdown, biodiversity data, ecoregion, water metrics — and generates cited analysis. Every claim distinguishes between spatial data from the map and domain knowledge from literature. Grounded in circular economy, regenerative design, and nature-positive frameworks.

What are the professional personas?

The AI adapts to 7 roles: Product Designer (circular economy, design for disassembly), Interior Designer (biophilic design, healthy materials), Architect (embodied carbon, passive design), Researcher (rigorous citation), Sustainability Lead (CSRD, GRI, SASB), Procurement Lead (vendor evaluation, chain of custody), and Business Analyst (risk mapping, ROI).

What reporting frameworks is the AI informed by?

CSRD, TNFD, ESRS, GRI, and SASB. The platform provides nature data that can support disclosures under these frameworks, but does not generate compliance reports or certify regulatory compliance.

What data sources does Archaster use?

Exclusively peer-reviewed, openly licensed datasets: Copernicus Sentinel-2 (10m, 5-day revisit), Global Forest Watch alerts, Hansen/UMD tree cover (loss, gain, density), GBIF (2.4B+ records), EC JRC Surface Water (1984–2021), WWF RESOLVE Ecoregions, ESA WorldCover (10m land cover), Natura 2000 protected areas, climate corridors, and indigenous territory boundaries.

How current is the data?

Sentinel-2: 5-day revisit cycle. GFW alerts: near-real-time. GBIF: continuously updated. JRC water: 1984–2021. Hansen tree cover: annually through 2024. Ecoregion boundaries are stable reference data.

How is Archaster different from Global Forest Watch?

GFW is a free, open platform focused on forest monitoring. Archaster uses GFW data as one source, adding satellite vegetation analysis (6 indices), biodiversity assessment, 40-year water analysis, ecoregion context, temporal comparison, and AI-powered interpretation. The key difference is synthesis: Archaster combines multiple datasets and interprets them together through domain-specialized AI.

How is Archaster different from Google Earth Engine?

Earth Engine requires programming expertise to write custom analysis scripts. Archaster is designed for business professionals who need environmental intelligence without code. It automates hours of Earth Engine scripting into a 30-second cited analysis.

How is Archaster different from sustainability consultants?

A consultant's site assessment typically costs €2,000–5,000 and takes days to weeks. Archaster performs comparable multi-source analysis in ~30 seconds with full citation. Designed to complement, not replace, expert judgment, but dramatically reduces initial assessment time and cost.

Is Archaster a compliance or certification tool?

No. Archaster is an analytical intelligence platform. Its outputs are environmental assessments, not legal opinions or compliance certificates. The data and analysis can support compliance workflows, but compliance determinations remain your responsibility.

Can Archaster help with EUDR due diligence?

Archaster provides several capabilities directly relevant to EUDR due diligence. Satellite vegetation analysis and near-real-time deforestation alerts from Global Forest Watch (GLAD, RADD, GLAD-S2 systems) with buffer zone analysis are core to deforestation risk assessment. The platform also screens supplier locations against indigenous territories — relevant to EUDR's legal production requirements in countries where indigenous land rights apply — and Natura 2000 protected areas, which carry specific legal weight for EU-based operators. Our geometry validation ensures that uploaded polygons are clean and reliable before analysis runs.

Archaster does not make regulatory compliance determinations or generate Due Diligence Statements. Its outputs are ecological assessments with full data provenance, designed to inform due diligence processes. Compliance determinations remain your responsibility, and we recommend consulting legal counsel for regulatory decisions.

We already have farm polygons from a traceability project — can we use those?

Yes — and this is one of the most direct paths to value in Archaster. If your organisation has already completed farm-level mapping, you have done the hardest part. Upload your polygon files directly to Archaster and the platform immediately runs a full ecological analysis across every site: vegetation health indices, deforestation alerts with buffer zone analysis, 40 years of surface water history, biodiversity records by functional group, and screening against indigenous territories, wildlife corridors, and Natura 2000 boundaries. No redrawing, no reformatting, no setup time. The traceability work you have already invested in becomes the foundation for continuous ecological monitoring.

Can Archaster help us monitor for yield or supply risk?

Yes. Beyond compliance and reporting, Archaster provides early ecological signals that are directly relevant to sourcing decisions. Vegetation moisture stress (NDMI) and vegetation vigor (NDVI, EVI) tracked over time can indicate deteriorating conditions at origin before they show up in yield data or market prices. A sourcing region showing sustained moisture stress or declining vegetation health is a signal worth acting on — whether that means engaging the supplier, diversifying origin exposure, or adjusting forward procurement. Surface water loss patterns add another layer: hydrological degradation at origin is a longer-term supply risk that conventional commodity forecasting tools rarely capture at site level. Archaster gives procurement and category managers location-specific ecological intelligence on the regions their supply actually depends on.

What is the difference between using Archaster for compliance reporting versus supply monitoring?

They use the same data but serve different teams and timelines.

Compliance and reporting use cases are driven by regulatory frameworks — EUDR, CSRD ESRS E4, TNFD, ESPR — and are typically owned by sustainability or ESG leads. The goal is to document the ecological state of supplier locations at a point in time, generate evidence for due diligence statements, and demonstrate that sourcing is not contributing to deforestation, habitat loss, or biodiversity decline. Archaster supports this by providing cited, audit-ready assessments that can be exported and referenced in disclosure workflows.

Supply monitoring use cases are driven by commercial risk and are typically owned by procurement, responsible sourcing, or category management teams. The goal is to track ecological conditions at origin over time and surface early signals of supply disruption — moisture stress, vegetation decline, water loss — before they translate into price volatility or quality issues. Archaster supports this through temporal comparison, portfolio-level alerts, and quarterly change tracking across entire supplier bases.

Both use cases work from the same polygon upload. Starting with a compliance workflow naturally surfaces supply risk findings and vice-versa.

Can Archaster support Science Based Targets for Nature (SBTN)?

Yes — Archaster is directly relevant to the first three steps of the SBTN process, which is where most companies currently struggle.

Step 1 — Assess requires companies to locate where their operations and value chains interact with nature, identify which ecosystems they depend on, and evaluate their actual and potential negative impacts. Archaster automates a significant part of this: upload your supplier or facility locations and get immediate ecological context — ecoregion, biodiversity records, deforestation pressure, protected species, invasive species, water history, and sensitive area screening. For every location in your portfolio.

Step 2 — Interpret and Prioritize requires companies to prioritize their most material nature-related impacts based on severity and likelihood. Archaster's AI co-pilot interprets the ecological data in your specific business context — surfacing which locations carry the highest compliance risk, which functional biodiversity gaps are most material, and which sites warrant immediate specialist assessment. It adapts this interpretation to your professional role — sustainability lead, procurement manager, or researcher.

Step 3 — Measure, set and disclose targets requires a baseline and ongoing monitoring. Archaster provides temporal data across two of SBTN's five nature realms:

Land: Vegetation health and land cover change from 2020 onwards, with tree cover loss data from 2001 — aligned with the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework baseline.

Freshwater: 40 years of surface water occurrence, transition, and seasonality data (1984–2021) from the JRC dataset, plus near-real-time surface water detection through NDWI and vegetation moisture stress through NDMI — updated every 5 days via Sentinel-2.

This gives your team a satellite-verified, peer-reviewed record of ecological change at priority locations across both realms. Full SBTN target setting across all five nature realms requires additional specialist input, but Archaster provides the land and freshwater measurement foundation.

Archaster doesn't replace the specialist ecological consultancy or target-setting process that SBTN requires. But it gives your team the location-specific ecological intelligence to enter that process informed rather than blind — and to monitor progress against your targets once they're set.