AlphaEarth Foundations Unveils AI-Powered Global Mapping at Unprecedented Scale

AlphaEarth Foundations is a groundbreaking AI model that transforms how we understand and monitor Earth by creating a unified, high-resolution digital representation of the planet’s land and coastal waters. By integrating petabytes of diverse Earth observation data—including optical satellite imagery, radar, 3D laser scanning, and climate simulations—the model generates a compact, 64-dimensional embedding for every 10x10 meter square of the planet. These embeddings act as a universal language for geospatial data, enabling computers to process and analyze Earth’s surface with unprecedented consistency and detail. One of the key challenges in Earth monitoring has been the sheer volume, variety, and inconsistency of satellite data. AlphaEarth Foundations solves this by synthesizing information from dozens of sources into a single, coherent representation. The model’s design allows it to see through persistent cloud cover, resolve complex terrain like Antarctica’s rugged ice surfaces, and detect subtle agricultural differences invisible to traditional methods. By assigning colors to three of the 64 embedding dimensions, researchers can visualize rich environmental details across regions such as Ecuador, Canada, and Antarctica. The model’s efficiency is equally impressive. It produces embeddings that require 16 times less storage than comparable AI systems, drastically lowering the cost of large-scale planetary analysis. This makes real-time, high-precision monitoring feasible for researchers and organizations with limited resources. To accelerate adoption, Google Earth Engine has released the Satellite Embedding dataset—powered by AlphaEarth Foundations—containing over 1.4 trillion annual embeddings. This dataset is already being used by leading institutions including the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, Harvard Forest, MapBiomas, Stanford University, and Oregon State University. Partners are using it to classify previously unmapped ecosystems, track deforestation, monitor crop health, and support climate resilience planning. The Global Ecosystems Atlas initiative, led by James Cook University, is leveraging the dataset to create the first comprehensive global inventory of Earth’s ecosystems. By identifying and categorizing regions like coastal shrublands and hyper-arid deserts, the project helps governments prioritize conservation, guide restoration efforts, and combat biodiversity loss. Independent testing shows AlphaEarth Foundations outperforms both traditional methods and other AI models, with a 24% lower error rate on average—especially in data-scarce environments. Its ability to learn efficiently from limited labeled examples makes it ideal for regions where ground truth data is hard to collect. Developed through a collaboration between Google DeepMind and Google Earth Engine, AlphaEarth Foundations represents a major leap forward in planetary-scale AI. It provides scientists, policymakers, and conservationists with a powerful new foundation for understanding Earth’s changing surface, enabling faster, more accurate decisions on issues ranging from food security to climate change.