Acceptable use policy
Contents
TESSERA Terms of Use and Ethical Guidelines
Purpose and Intended Uses
TESSERA was developed to advance scientific research and support environmental monitoring, conservation, sustainable agriculture, and understanding of Earth systems. We designed this tool to enable:
- Scientific research and education
- Environmental monitoring and conservation
- Agricultural and food security analysis
- Climate change research and adaptation planning
- Sustainable land use and resource management
- Public interest applications that benefit society and the environment
Ethical Guidelines
While the CC0 license permits broad use, we strongly encourage users to consider the ethical implications of their work. We request that users:
Act Responsibly:
- Consider privacy implications when analyzing specific locations
- Respect the rights and dignity of affected communities
- Be mindful of potential dual-use concerns
Be Transparent:
- Accurately represent the data's characteristics (annual resolution, 10m spatial resolution)
- Acknowledge limitations in your applications
- Do not misrepresent TESSERA's capabilities
Support Positive Impact:
- Consider how your work contributes to societal benefit
- Engage with affected communities when appropriate
- Share findings that advance public knowledge
Data Characteristics
Users should understand that TESSERA provides:
- Annual temporal resolution — data represents yearly summaries, not real-time or high-frequency monitoring
- 10-meter spatial resolution — suitable for landscape-scale analysis
- Spectral-temporal embeddings — compressed representations, not raw imagery
Please accurately represent these characteristics in your work.
Attribution Request
When using TESSERA data, we request that you provide attribution by either citing our website at https://github.com/ucam-eo/tessera or paper, currently an ArXiv preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20380
Community Standards
We encourage responsible use and welcome community feedback. If you have concerns about potential applications or suggestions for improving these guidelines, please contact us.
We reserve the right to update these guidelines based on community input and emerging considerations, though such updates do not retroactively affect the CC0 license under which data is released.
Contact
For questions about appropriate use or to report concerns: S. Keshav: sk818@cam.ac.uk
TESSERA data is released under CC0. These ethical guidelines are advisory and do not impose legal restrictions beyond those in the CC0 license.
Last updated: January 21, 2026
