The grid is a stand-in for a satellite image tile, one cell per pixel-patch, viewed top-down instead of from an orbiting camera. Deforestation ignites at random frontier cells and spreads to forested neighbours. A pollution plume diffuses outward from a fixed source the same way a discharge spreads through water or air. Neither process is "detected" as it happens — the satellite only sees the ground each time its scan line (the cyan bar) crosses it.
Δforest = forest(t_prev_pass) − forest(t_scan)
alert ⇔ Δ > sensitivity (else: change happens, but stays unflagged)
- Deforestation rate — how fast ignited clearings eat into neighbouring forest cells, and how often a new illegal clearing ignites.
- Pollution spread rate — diffusion strength carrying the plume outward from its source each pass.
- Detector sensitivity — the change-detection threshold a computer-vision model would use between two image passes.
- Satellite scan speed — how many grid rows the scan line covers per second, standing in for revisit frequency.