Life within Earth’s biosphere consists of millions of species living in various types of biomes such as grassland, forest, desert, aquatic, and tundra areas. Biomes are often divided into numerous subtypes, including rainforest or savannah. Vegetation, soil, climate, and wildlife are the primary components of a biome’s composition, known as its biodiversity. A biome’s biodiversity plays a critical role in Earth’s global energy budget and in many of its biogeochemical cycles. Maintaining species richness in the biosphere ensures the productivity and stability of ecosystem processes, making it critical to monitor vegetation and wildlife health and prevent their loss. There are many human causes of biodiversity loss on Earth, including deforestation, agricultural development, urbanization, water and air pollution, and climate change. Preserving Earth's biodiversity requires understanding the ways in which humans are interacting with the environment and how resulting changes impact Earth’s systems.

NASA’s satellite-based and other remote sensing data measure vegetation condition (e.g., greenness, water stress), vegetation types, canopy height, vertical structure of forests, habitat structure, evaporative stress, delineation and conservation of protected areas, phenology, and biomass measurements of groups and individuals. There is data with environmental variables such as temperature and precipitation for species distribution and habitat suitability; human impacts to biological diversity, such as deforestation or nighttime lights on predator-prey interactions; spectroscopy information for direct detection of species; thermal anomaly and fire detection signals; and aquatic data such as cyanobacteria indexes and water surface temperature.

These datasets are essential for assessing human impact on biodiversity and for conservation planning and monitoring; investigating biological diversity, species distribution, and ecological conservation; tracking the effects of natural and human events on habitats, and to complement field data.