CYCLOPS named a Verra-vetted Data Service Provider for VM0047

Every restoration project eventually has to show that it made a difference.

Planting trees on degraded land is the visible work. Years later, the project has to demonstrate that the vegetation standing there is the result of that work, and that it would not have come back on its own. That counterfactual sits at the center of every carbon credit a restoration project issues, and is used to compare the project’s performance against a business as usual scenario across a close radius and used to assess the Performance Benchmark.

The carbon market has spent the last several years confronting what happens when those answers do not hold up. Buyers, regulators and the public have asked, reasonably, whether credits represent real change. Additionally, growing buyer demand for active carbon removals—rather than avoided emissions—raises the bar for verification. If you claim to have pulled carbon out of the atmosphere, you must definitively prove it.

Rather than fixing a baseline at the outset, VM0047– Verra's methodology for afforestation, reforestation and revegetation (ARR), measures the baseline as the project runs. A Stocking Index derived from satellite imagery tracks vegetation change inside the project area and in matched control areas over the same period. If a run of wet years greens up the whole region, the benchmark rises with it, and the project is credited only for what it added beyond that. The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market has approved the methodology as meeting its Core Carbon Principles.

That is a stronger approach, and it puts the quality of the data at the center of everything. The whole system depends on the Stocking Index being consistent across sites and years, and sensitive enough to detect real change. It also needs to be fine grained enough to be applicable for small-holder settings...in addition to being robust against cloud coverage (e.g. combined use of SAR and optical data).

This is why Verra vets the providers who produce that data, and why this recognition matters to us. CYCLOPS, dClimate's digital measurement, reporting and verification platform, is now a Verra-vetted Data Service Provider for VM0047. Our approach to generating Stocking Index data has been confirmed to meet the methodology's performance benchmark requirements, and we are one of seven providers Verra has hand-picked for this role.

For project developers, CYCLOPS data can now be used to establish the benchmark a project is measured against, which shortens provider selection and helps streamline registration and verification. CYCLOPS can support projects across a wide range of climates, environmental conditions, and field sizes, while making the best possible use of existing field data. It does not replace review. This data is also seamlessly integrated into Verra’s Digital Hub via API. Every project and its data are still assessed independently by Verra and a validation and verification body, and that independence is part of what makes the system credible.

The larger significance is what credible measurement makes possible. There is no shortage of degraded land, or of people ready to restore it. The constraint is usually money, and funders want evidence that a project is doing what it claims. CYCLOPS makes the most of costly field measurements, helping projects get more value from the data they already have. When a project can show, with data a standards body has vetted, how much it changed the landscape against a fair comparison, it becomes easier to fund, and easier to keep funding across the decades a restored forest needs.

Our Stocking Index model is already running across restoration and agroforestry projects in 10 countries, with more in development, alongside our broader work supporting nature-based projects from design through monitoring. Vetting under VM0047 gives that work a firmer footing and gives the developers we work with the confidence that the approach meets the methodology’s requirements.

The recognition comes the same week dClimate and Amazon Web Services, through the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, released the complete global historical record of TESSERA, the Earth observation foundation model behind our EarthOS platform, as free and open public data. TESSERA puts nine years of consistent, 10-meter observation of the Earth's land surface within anyone's reach, and Verra's vetting confirms our measurement meets the standard a carbon methodology demands. We see them as parts of the same effort: making what is claimed about land something others can independently check.

This recognition belongs to the team that built it, led by Chamss Ould, Head of CYCLOPS, and Dr. Clement Atzberger, whose remote sensing research underpins our approach, along with everyone whose work made it possible.

If you are developing or planning an ARR project, we would like to hear about it. Get in touch at contact@cyclops.ai.

Verra's announcement: https://verra.org/verra-announces-additional-vetted-data-service-providers-for-arr-methodology/

TESSERA on AWS: https://blog.dclimate.net/p/e93db6f7-0bb4-4c3d-b37e-da89bae936dc/