The "New monitor" tab walks you through it, step by step, with a live map beside you. When Ava Reyes wants to watch a riparian buffer along the "Harbourview Network Buildout" corridor, this is where she starts.
- 1
"What to watch" — pick the kind of change you're looking for.
- 2
"Area of interest" — click the map to drop each corner, then double-click or click "Finish shape" to close it. "Clear" starts over.
Monitoring works best over stable vegetation — forest, plantation, reclamation ground, a riparian buffer. Cropland and built-up areas change constantly for ordinary reasons, so they generate noise.
- 3
"Imagery" — satellite imagery, or your own.
- 4
"Baseline period" — what to compare against. "Same window last year" is the right default: comparing the same season year-over-year keeps normal seasonal change out of your results. Use "Fixed dates" when you have a specific reference period in mind.
- 5
"Cadence" — how often it checks, or "Manual only" if you'd rather run it yourself.
- 6
"Sensitivity & review" — how much change counts as change, and how much clear imagery a run needs before it will make any claim at all. The defaults are a sensible starting point; tighten them if you're getting more candidates than you can review.
Name the monitor here, and pick its "Project".
Before you commit, the footer tells you what each run will cost against your quota. Then click "Create monitor".
Changing it later
The pencil icon on a monitor row opens "Edit monitor", which is clear about what happens: "Saving publishes a new version. Past runs and accepted detections stay attached to the settings that produced them."
So you can retune sensitivity, cadence, or the baseline without invalidating what the monitor has already found. Click "Save new version" when you're done. For a different area or a different thing to watch, create a new monitor.
To retire one, use the archive icon. It stops running, everything it found stays available, and "Restore" brings it back.