mikoontz/remote-prediction-of-tree-mortality

The project is an academic research repository dating back to approximately 2015-2016, focused on a specific historical drought event in the Sierra Nevada. With only 3 stars and no recent activity (velocity 0.0), it serves as a static record of scientific work rather than a living software project. In terms of defensibility, it lacks any moat; the methodologies (NDVI time-series analysis) have been superseded by modern deep learning approaches in Earth Observation (EO) and the arrival of higher-resolution datasets like Sentinel-2 and Planet Scope. While frontier labs like Google or OpenAI are unlikely to build a specific 'Sierra Nevada mortality predictor,' the general capabilities of geospatial foundation models (e.g., IBM's Prithvi or Clay) make this specific implementation obsolete. Any commercial value in this space is currently captured by specialized climate-tech firms (e.g., Salo Sciences/Descartes Labs) using more robust, multi-sensor pipelines. Its value today is purely as a historical reference for ecological methodology.