Pulitzer Center Update June 28, 2026
Webinar On-Demand: How To Explore the Planet in Minutes with Earth Index Deep Search
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On June 24, 2026, the Pulitzer Center held a webinar discussion with former Pulitzer Center Rainforest Investigation Network (RIN) Fellow Alexander Abdelilah, Pulitzer Center Data Editor Federico Acosta Rainis, and Earth Genome Science and AI Lead Ben Strong. The webinar focused on how to use Earth Index and its Deep Search feature.
Earth Index is an AI-powered satellite imagery tool, developed by the nonprofit Earth Genome, that enables anyone to search for specific landscape features anywhere on Earth with no coding skills required. By labeling just a few examples of what someone is looking for, Earth Index can detect mines, roads, airstrips, plantations, and much more across the entire planet in minutes.
In this webinar organized by Earth Genome and the Pulitzer Center, we introduce Deep Search, a powerful new feature designed to scale environmental tracking across massive territories with high accuracy. Deep Search allows to identify sprawling or dispersed operations by continuously analyzing location-based data over time.
The event drew in 500 registrants and approximately 300 live attendees across the planet, including journalists, nonprofit professionals, academics, and researchers. The webinar included an introduction to Earth Index and its main features, and a live demo of the new Deep Search tool led by Ben Strong, from Earth Genome. Then, former RIN Fellow Alexander Abdelilah presented an investigation he did about illegal gold mining in Ghana in which he used Earth Index.
To learn more about how to use Earth Index and its new Deep Search feature, watch the full video.
Useful links
- To create a free Earth Index account and start using it, click here.
- This is the investigation into gold mining in Ghana presented by Alexander Abdellilah.
- This is the investigation into concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) published in The Plotline.
- The Amazon Mining Watch website, for monitoring gold mining in the Amazon.
