Our planet is changing dramatically in ways that are visible even from space. These changes are in part because of climate change amplifying environmental disturbances, like wildfires and floods, and human activity, like deforestation and urban development. Detailed information about these changes and their impact on people, the climate, and ecosystems can help governments and researchers develop helpful solutions and minimize their effects on issues like climate change, food insecurity and loss of biodiversity.Historically, it’s been difficult to access detailed, up-to-date land cover data which documents how much of a region is covered with different land and water types such as wetlands, forests, agricultural crops, trees, urban development and more.To help turn satellite imagery into more useful information for quantifying change, we worked with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to create Dynamic World. Powered by Google Earth Engine and AI Platform, Dynamic World provides global, near real-time land cover data at a ten-meter resolution, giving an unprecedented level of detail about what's on the land and how it's being used — whether it’s forests in the Amazon, agriculture in Asia, urban development in Europe or seasonal water resources in North America. With this information, people — like scientists and policymakers — can monitor and understand land and ecosystems so they can make more accurate predictions and effective plans to protect our planet in the future.A more detailed understanding of earth’s land than ever beforeCurrently, most existing datasets assign a single land cover type to an area of land — like trees, built-up, crops or snow — based on what’s most prominent in a satellite image combined with an expert’s determination of the land cover. So current datasets might classify a satellite image of a city as ‘built-up,’ but visit any city and you’ll see our world is far more dynamic. While you might see lots of buildings, you’ll also see trees or even snow on the ground from a recent storm.To create a more accurate understanding of land cover with Dynamic World, our partners at WRI identified the nine most critical land cover types we wanted to classify: water, flooded vegetation, built-up areas, trees, crops, bare ground, grass, shrub/scrub, and snow/ice. Dynamic World uses our AI and cloud computing to detect combinations of different land cover types and make conclusions about how likely it is for each of the nine types to be present in every pixel (about 1,100 square feet of land) of a satellite image.This level of insight into how land is being used can help public, private and non-profit decision makers better understand what’s happening to the world’s land. With this knowledge, they can develop plans to protect, manage and restore land, and monitor the effectiveness of those plans using alert systems to notify when unforeseen land changes are taking place.As Craig Hanson, Vice President of Food, Forests, Water and the Ocean at the World Resources I The pace of the spike in mortgage rates over the past several days has been nothing but staggering --especially considering it began when rates were already near their highest levels in more than a decade.  From an average level of 5.55% for a top tier 30yr fixed quote on Thursday, the average lender was up to 6.28% by yesterday afternoon. The drama began with last Friday's Consumer Price Index (CPI), a key inflation report that showed prices rising faster than expected.  Inflation is biggest concern for the Fed at the moment, and the biggest reason for their increasingly aggressive efforts to push rates higher in 2022. CPI alone wouldn't have been worth the drama we witnessed, however.  The frenzy of the past few days was compounded by the fact that the financial market knew there was a Fed announcement coming up on Wednesday AND that the Fed was in its regularly-scheduled "blackout period."  During the blackout period, the Fed refrains from public comment on monetary policy.  In other words, markets were flying blind as to what the Fed's response might be to the CPI data, and imaginations ran wild. When we finally heard from the Fed today, the initial reaction suggested the market's wild imagination was actually fairly accurate.  The Fed hiked its policy rate by the same 75 basis points (0.75%) predicted by Fed Funds Futures (tradeable contracts that allow markets to bet on the level of the Fed Funds Rate).  Not only that, but the initial reaction in bonds (the place we'd expect to see the most visible reaction, and the financial instruments that dictate interest rate movement) was fairly sideways.