Please check the tutorial below for guidance on how to use the comparison tool or follow the instructions below for additional information:

This article walks you through how to use our Comparison Tool, a feature designed to help clients perform preliminary visual inspections of farm plots flagged as critical or high risk for DEF04 (farm plot overlapping with deforestation area- commercial map) or DEF01 (farm plot overlapping with deforestation area- public map) in the Verify Portal.

It helps users investigate the deforestation area on a farm plot against satellite imagery across multiple years, for assessing potential deforestation events. This is particularly useful during challenges or appeals. It ensures clients take informed action to comply with EUDR requirements.

After identifying the farm plots generating risk under DEF01 or DEF04 in the Verify Portal, you can view them in the map view to locate the deforestation alerts and begin the investigation.

For this tutorial, we are investigating Farm_plot_ID27 (as an example) to identify changes from forested to non-forested areas by analysing and comparing the contested farm plot against multiple data sources found in the comparison tool.

It is helpful to adjust layer opacities to see where the deforestation alert is located- e.g., in the centre of the plot. This can be done by lowering the opacity of the farm boundary and increasing the opacity of the deforestation alert layer.
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Download the Excel sheet from the Verify Portal.

Extract the coordinates for Farm_plot_ID27 by copying it from the Excel sheet obtained from the verify portal. You will find the geometry coordinates below the header labelled 'geometry'.

Paste the coordinates to the comparison tool at the bar shown below and press on 'Draw geometry'. This will project the polygon on the map and allow you to begin comparing satellite images across different years.

The Comparison tool supports assessing Farm_plot_ID_27 against Sentinel-2 satellite imagery with a 10m resolution via Google Earth Engine. It allows your team to visually investigate before & after changes in the location flagged as deforestation on the farm geometry across 2020 to 2024.

Additional public satellite layers that are available in the Comparison tool:

You can use the scroller to compare images from different years and inspect whether there is any evident loss of vegetation or noticeable discolouration at the location of the deforestation alert.

The geometry of farm plots can also be visually assessed by projecting them onto Google Earth Pro. This is done by converting the GeoJSON file to a KML format.

Once converted, the KML file can be dragged and dropped into Google Earth Pro for additional checks.

A red boundary outlining the farm polygon will appear on Google Earth Pro, as shown below.

Google Earth Pro provides access to multiple sources of satellite imagery. These sources include Landsat-8 (30m resolution), MODIS (250m resolution), Maxar, and SkySat (~50cm resolution), enabling a comprehensive analysis across diverse satellite datasets.

Use the historical imagery slider to review vegetation conditions over time.

This tutorial provides a guide for users to evaluate appeals related to deforestation detection. This tool is intended for preliminary visual checks only as a first step to validate the results.

It is important to note that this tool is being tested and under improvement.