Vegetation Monitoring
Getting Started with Vegetation Index Monitoring
Vegetation Index Monitoring turns Sentinel-2 imagery into a continuous read on how your fields are doing. Subscribe a field and Siora pulls every clear image over it going back up to 3 years, then keeps updating weekly through the year — 11 vegetation indices per clear date, with maps, stats, trends, and an on-demand plain-language interpretation.
What you get with a subscription
Subscriptions run yearly, priced per hectare. Each subscribed field includes:
- 11 vegetation indices for every clear-sky acquisition (NDVI, NDRE, NDMI, EVI, MSAVI, BSI, GNDVI, MSI, NIRv, NDSI, OSAVI) — see Indices Explained for what each tells you.
- Up to 3 years of historical imagery, backfilled automatically the moment you subscribe.
- Weekly updates for the full subscription year as new clear images arrive.
- An interactive dashboard: heatmaps, per-date stats, health breakdowns, distribution histograms, and historical trend charts.
- AI Interpretation of the latest acquisition, in your account language.
- A split view against soil data, if the field also has a Siora soil analysis.
- CSV (full time series) and Shapefile (georeferenced heatmap points) exports.
Pricing is shown in the order panel before you confirm — see your account for current rates.
Subscribing to a field
Two entry points:
- From the field's order report — open the Indexes tab; if the field isn't subscribed yet, click the "Unlock Monitoring" button to start the order flow.
- From the order creation flow — choose Vegetation Indexes in the Product Selector step when placing a new order.
The order panel shows the product name, the per-hectare yearly price and field total, a summary of what's included (11 indices, one year forward, three years retrospective), and common use cases — stress detection, growth tracking, in-season yield-estimation support, irrigation and moisture management, season-over-season comparison. Payment runs through Stripe. Subscriptions don't auto-renew — see Renewal and cancellation.
First activation: what happens behind the scenes
Date discovery
Siora queries the Sentinel-2 archive for every image of your field over the last 3 years with 40% cloud cover or less.
Per-date processing
Each clear date's relevant bands are pulled at 10 m resolution, cleaned of remaining cloud, clipped to your boundary, and run through all 11 indices in one pass.
Stats and trend points
For every index on every date, Siora stores the field average, min, max, standard deviation, valid pixel count, a 20-bin distribution, and the healthy/marginal/stressed area split.
Heatmap data
Up to 5,000 georeferenced points per index per date are sampled so the map renders quickly.
How long it takes depends on how many clear historical dates exist for the field — a small field in a sunny region might be ready in minutes, while a large field in a cloudy region with years of clear imagery can take longer. The dashboard updates as soon as the first date finishes processing, so there's no need to wait for the full backfill before exploring, and no need to keep the tab open — processing runs server-side.
Opening the dashboard
Open it from the Indexes tab on any active field's report, or go directly to/indexes/:fieldId. Four areas make up the interface: a header (field selector, subscription status and progress, export menu), a toolbar (index selector, view-mode toggle), a sidebar with the analytics for the selected index and date, and the map panel itself. If the timeline is still empty on first load, the sidebar shows a processing animation until the first date lands.
Reading a single date
Once a date is loaded, the sidebar covers everything: a plain-language reminder of what the current index measures, a scrollable acquisition timeline of every clear date processed, field average/min/max for the selected index, an Area Health Breakdown (healthy/marginal/stressed share, with a delta versus the previous acquisition), a 20-bar value-distribution histogram colour-coded by health class, and a historical trend chart with selectable range (1 month, 3 months, 1 year, all) and metric (average, min, max).
A practical pattern: start with NDVI for a general read, switch to NDRE or GNDVI if nitrogen looks off, check NDMI or MSI during dry stretches, and use MSAVI or OSAVI early in the season while bare soil is still visible. See Indices Explained for the full index-by-index guide.
Using AI Interpretation
At the bottom of the sidebar, click "Request Interpretation" for a plain-language read of the field's current state, in three parts: a short summary of overall condition, an action plan of 1–3 concrete next steps, and a detailed analysis of cross-index patterns and trend direction — capped at roughly 150 words, in your account language. It's only available on the latest clear date (to keep it grounded in current conditions), and once generated it's cached — repeat requests return the same text.
Combining indices with soil data
If the field also has a Siora soil analysis, toggle the view mode to "Index + Soil Data" for a split view: vegetation index on top, soil property on the bottom, with the dashboard pre-selecting a sensible pairing (NDRE with nitrogen, NDMI with organic matter, BSI with pH), which you can change at any time. If there's no soil analysis yet, the bottom half prompts you to order one directly.
Exporting your data
The export menu offers a CSV of the full time series across every date and index, and a zipped Shapefile of georeferenced heatmap points for one index on one date — both generated on demand, with no rate limits or size caps.
Renewal and cancellation
A subscription runs one year from purchase, with a progress bar in the dashboard header. There's no auto-renewal — as the year winds down, a "Renew Monitoring" button appears in the dashboard and on the field's Indexes tab. Renewing reprocesses any historical dates not already stored and drops dates that have aged out of the rolling 3-year window; existing snapshots are kept as-is. Since there's no auto-renew, there's nothing to actively cancel — the subscription simply ends at the end of the paid year, and the field's dashboard switches to an expired state until you choose to renew.
When something looks wrong
Empty timeline on a new subscription: processing is still running — leave the dashboard open or check back later.
Empty timeline on an established field: usually means no clear-sky passes recently, which is normal in cloudy regions or seasons.
A long gap between dates: Sentinel-2 revisits every few days, but only images at 40% cloud cover or less are used — persistently cloudy regions can see gaps of weeks or more.
Missing data at a field's edge: can happen where a field sits on a Sentinel-2 tile boundary; usually fills in on the next pass.
FAQ
- Where is monitoring available?
- Anywhere Sentinel-2 covers, which is most of the world's land, with full support across the EU. How often you get clear images depends on local cloud conditions.
- How fresh is the data?
- New clear images are ingested weekly. The cadence you actually experience depends on satellite revisit (every few days) and how often the sky is clear over your field.
- Can I share a field with another user?
- Not currently — each field is tied to one account.
- Is there a minimum field size?
- No enforced minimum. Very small fields work fine, though at 10 m pixel resolution they'll have fewer data points per date.
- What languages does AI Interpretation support?
- Whatever your account language is set to.
- Can I get a refund?
- Subscriptions are non-refundable.
- How do I see the healthy/marginal/stressed thresholds?
- The reference table lives on Indices Explained.
For a deeper look at each index, see Indices Explained.