# Archaster Labs — Full Reference > Full text of the Archaster Labs product and FAQ pages, provided for AI > assistants and search agents. Canonical site: https://archasterlabs.earth > Short index: https://archasterlabs.earth/llms.txt > Language: this file is English. The same product and FAQ content is published > in German (/de/product.html, /de/faq.html) and Norwegian Bokmal > (/no/product.html, /no/faq.html). # ==== https://archasterlabs.earth/product.html ==== Archaster — Nature Intelligence Platform for Sourcing, Sustainability, and Design Teams Business Regenerative ← Back to Archaster ## Archaster Nature intelligence platform for sourcing, sustainability, and design teams. Supply chains depend on living systems. The landscapes where materials are grown, harvested, and processed are subject to deforestation pressure, water stress, biodiversity loss, and ecological degradation — conditions that create both compliance risk and supply disruption. Most sourcing decisions are made without visibility into any of this. Archaster closes that gap. It's an environmental intelligence platform that combines satellite imagery, deforestation monitoring, biodiversity assessment, and surface water analysis with AI-powered interpretation, giving sourcing and procurement teams, sustainability leads, and product designers ecological intelligence on any location. No GIS expertise required. The platform synthesizes data from multiple research-grade sources into a single spatial analysis, then uses a domain-specific AI to generate cited, role-adapted assessments with data provenance. ## What Archaster Does Users identify a location — by drawing a polygon on the map, uploading supplier geometries, or selecting a region — and Archaster retrieves and analyzes environmental data for that area. The platform then presents both quantitative metrics (vegetation indices, deforestation alert counts, biodiversity records, water persistence data) and a qualitative AI-generated analysis that interprets those metrics for the user's specific professional context. The AI analysis cites every data point it references, distinguishing between spatial data derived from the map (labeled as "Spatial" citations) and domain knowledge from research literature (labeled as "Reference" citations). This provenance system allows users to verify every claim the AI makes. Archaster's AI has deep domain knowledge in textile and building material science, including fiber composition, chemical finishes, recyclability, and emerging regulatory requirements such as ESPR and the Digital Product Passport. When combined with spatial analysis of sourcing regions, the platform connects material decisions to their landscape-level impacts — from the cotton field to the compliance report. ## Core Capabilities ## Satellite Vegetation Analysis Six spectral vegetation indices computed from Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery at 10-meter resolution: NDVI (plant health), EVI (dense canopy accuracy), NDWI (water detection), NDMI (vegetation moisture), SAVI (sparse vegetation), NBR (burn severity), and NDRE (crop nitrogen stress). Each index is computed for a user-selected date range and displayed as a color-mapped overlay on the map with per-pixel statistical summaries (mean, standard deviation, percentiles) for any drawn area of interest. ## Deforestation Monitoring Near-real-time deforestation alerts from Global Forest Watch, displayed on the map with confidence levels (low, nominal, high). The platform performs automated buffer zone analysis at 500m and 2km radii around any drawn area of interest, counting alerts inside the site boundary and in each surrounding ring. This reveals encroachment patterns — when buffer zone alerts significantly exceed site alerts, the area is classified as intact but under approaching threat. Additional map layers include tree cover loss (2001–2024), tree cover gain, and tree cover density, sourced from Hansen/UMD/Google/USGS/NASA. ## Biodiversity Insights We use species occurrence data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), which aggregates over 2.4 billion records from research institutions and citizen science programs worldwide. Archaster filters for research-grade observations and accepted taxonomic names only, excluding unverified sightings and synonym duplicates, to ensure data quality. The platform scans the area of interest and surrounding buffers (2km and 10km) and categorizes observed species into nine functional ecological groups: apex predators and scavengers, large herbivores and seed dispersers, primary pollinators, secondary and specialist pollinators, soil engineers and decomposers, aquatic and semi-aquatic species, ecosystem engineers (plants and corals), ecosystem engineers (animals), and keystone and indicator species. Functional gaps — groups with zero records — may indicate missing ecological roles, though absence of records does not necessarily mean absence of species. GBIF coverage varies significantly by region. Well-surveyed areas such as Western Europe, North America, and parts of Australia have dense, reliable records. Many tropical regions, particularly in Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and parts of South America, have sparse coverage — meaning ecologically rich landscapes may appear data-poor simply because fewer surveys have been conducted there. Archaster flags when record counts are low relative to the ecoregion's expected biodiversity, helping users distinguish between genuine functional gaps and data coverage limitations. Despite these limitations, GBIF remains the most comprehensive open-access biodiversity dataset available globally and provides a meaningful starting point for ecological assessment at any location. ## Protected and invasive species alerts (Germany) For locations in Germany, Archaster provides two additional biodiversity layers sourced from the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (Bundesamt für Naturschutz, BfN): Protected Species Alerts — Species listed under the EU Habitats Directive (FFH Directive, Annexes II, IV, and V) with confirmed presence in distribution grid cells overlapping the area of interest and buffer zones. Annex II species may trigger Special Area of Conservation obligations. Annex IV species carry strict protection requirements throughout their natural range, regardless of whether the location falls within a designated protected area. Annex V species are subject to management measures. Invasive Species Alerts — Species listed under the EU Invasive Alien Species Regulation (EU 1143/2014) with confirmed presence in overlapping grid cells. On-site invasive species indicate active management obligations and potential ecosystem degradation. Nearby invasive species indicate colonization risk. Both layers operate at approximately 10×10km grid cell resolution. Confirmed presence within a grid cell does not guarantee presence within the specific area of interest. Field surveys are recommended for site-level confirmation. Coverage is currently limited to Germany. Additional countries will be added as national datasets become available. ## Surface Water Analysis Three surface water layers from the EC JRC Global Surface Water dataset, covering 1984 to 2021 at 30-meter resolution. Occurrence shows percentage of time water was present. Seasonality shows months per year with water. Transitions categorize change states: permanent, new permanent, lost permanent, seasonal, new seasonal, lost seasonal. Lost categories signal hydrological degradation; new permanent may indicate dam construction or land subsidence. For current-state water detection, Archaster also computes NDWI (Normalized Difference Water Index) from Sentinel-2 imagery — detecting surface water bodies and soil moisture at 10m resolution with 5-day revisit frequency. NDMI (Normalized Difference Moisture Index) provides complementary vegetation moisture stress data, reflecting subsurface and soil water availability. Together the JRC historical dataset and the Sentinel-2 water indices provide both a 40-year baseline and near-real-time water monitoring for any location. ## AI-Powered Analysis A domain-specialized AI that receives the full geospatial context and generates cited analysis adapted to seven professional personas: Product Designer, Interior Designer, Architect, Researcher, Sustainability Lead, Procurement Lead, and General Business Analyst. Grounded in circular economy, regenerative design, and nature-positive frameworks. Every claim is cited to its source. ## Temporal Comparison Compare any two time periods side by side. The platform computes statistical differences in vegetation health, deforestation pressure, and water presence, allowing users to track environmental changes over any timeframe covered by Sentinel-2 (2015 to present). ## Batch Portfolio Analysis Upload hundreds of supplier polygons. Analyze them all. Export the results. Designed for supply chain monitoring at scale with portfolio-level dashboards and site-specific alerts. ## Data Sources Archaster uses exclusively peer-reviewed, openly licensed, and institutionally maintained datasets: Copernicus Sentinel-2 — Satellite imagery at 10m resolution with 5-day revisit cycle. Source: European Space Agency via Copernicus Open Access Hub. License: Copernicus Sentinel Data Terms and Conditions. Global Forest Watch (GFW) — Integrated deforestation alerts combining GLAD (UMD), RADD (Wageningen), and GLAD-S2 detection systems. Near-real-time coverage in tropical regions. License: CC BY 4.0. Hansen/UMD Tree Cover — Tree cover loss (2001–2024), gain, and density at 30m resolution. Source: Hansen, Potapov, Moore, Hancher et al., University of Maryland, Google, USGS, and NASA. License: CC BY 4.0. GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) — 2.4 billion+ species occurrence records aggregated from research institutions worldwide. License: CC BY 4.0 (with dataset-specific terms). EC JRC / Google Global Surface Water — 40 years of surface water mapping (1984–2021) at 30m resolution. Source: Pekel et al., Nature 540, 418–422 (2016). European Commission Joint Research Centre and Google. License: Copernicus Programme, free without restriction. WWF RESOLVE Ecoregions — Global ecoregion and biome classification for automatic ecological context detection. License: CC BY 4.0. LandMark — The global platform for indigenous and community land rights, mapping territories and areas where indigenous peoples and local communities have recognized or documented land claims. The authoritative open source for indigenous territorial data in supply chain due diligence. License: CC BY 4.0. Potential climate & wildlife corridors — Modeled pathways from the Global Safety Net initiative that identify permeable routes through human-modified landscapes, designed to connect isolated protected areas and enable large mammal migration and climate adaptation. License: Based on Dinerstein et al. (2020). Data provided for informational and decision-support purposes, with attribution to the original authors. ESA WorldCover — Global land cover map at 10m resolution. Source: European Space Agency. License: CC BY 4.0. ## Who It's For Archaster is built for organizations that source materials from the living world and need to understand the environmental condition and risk profile of their sourcing regions: Procurement teams evaluating supplier locations for environmental risk, assessing deforestation, biodiversity loss, or water stress, and generating evidence for supplier qualification decisions. Sustainability leads preparing environmental disclosures under CSRD, TNFD, and GRI who need site-level and portfolio-level nature data with traceable provenance. Product designers and material specifiers who need to understand how material provenance affects true environmental footprint beyond what supplier datasheets reveal. Researchers and consultants conducting landscape-level ecological assessments who need a fast way to combine satellite data, biodiversity records, deforestation monitoring, and water analysis. ## What Archaster Is Not Archaster doesn't certify compliance — but it provides the ecological evidence base that compliance workflows require. Archaster is not a GIS application. It does not replace QGIS, ArcGIS, or Google Earth Engine for users who need custom geospatial computations. It is designed for professionals who need environmental insights without geospatial expertise. Archaster is not a prediction system. It reports on current and historical environmental conditions using live satellite data and research-grade datasets. ## Company Archaster is developed by Archaster Labs, a founder-led, independent technology company. The platform's mission is to make environmental intelligence accessible to the teams whose decisions shape how materials are sourced, products are designed, and supply chains are managed. Last updated: February 2026. See FAQ for common questions. # ==== https://archasterlabs.earth/faq.html ==== FAQ — Archaster Nature Intelligence Business Regenerative ← Back to Archaster ## Frequently Asked Questions Common questions about Archaster's nature intelligence platform. Platform Overview 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. 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. Core Capabilities 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. AI Intelligence 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. Data Sources 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. Comparisons 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 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 with full citation. Designed to complement, not replace, expert judgment, but dramatically reduces initial assessment time and cost. Compliance and Reporting 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. Last updated: February 2026. For more details, see the full product overview .