Technical
GLAD
Also known as: Global Land Analysis and Discovery, GLAD-L, GLAD-S2
TL;DR
Maryland's optical-satellite deforestation alert family — GLAD-L from Landsat (30 m) and GLAD-S2 from Sentinel-2 (10 m), updated multiple times per week.
Full explainer
GLAD — Global Land Analysis and Discovery — is the laboratory at the University of Maryland that produces the GLAD-L (Landsat-based, 30m resolution) and GLAD-S2 (Sentinel-2-based, 10m resolution) deforestation alert layers. Both are optical-imagery products: cloud-free pixels are required, so the alert latency in the Indonesian tropics can extend to weeks during the rainy season.
GLAD alerts complement RADD (radar-based) in the GFW integrated-alerts stack. The combined product flags a pixel as confirmed deforestation once any two of {RADD, GLAD-S2, GLAD-L} have flagged it independently. For the KarbonLens reversal-risk methodology, both unconfirmed (single-source) and confirmed (multi-source) GLAD alerts are recorded; only confirmed alerts within the project buffer contribute to the integrity-score penalty.
Authoritative source
University of Maryland GLAD Lab →Related terms