mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Earth-Agent: Unlocking the Full Landscape of Earth Observation with Agents

arXiv 2509.23141 ↗First posted 27 Sep 2025cs.CVcited by 42

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Multimodal and embodied agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Earth observation (EO) is essential for understanding the evolving states of the Earth system. Although recent MLLMs have advanced EO research, they still lack the capability to tackle complex tasks that require multi-step reasoning and the use of domain-specific tools. Agent-based methods offer a promising direction, but current attempts remain in their infancy, confined to RGB perception, shallow reasoning, and lacking systematic evaluation protocols. To overcome these limitations, we introduce Earth-Agent, the first agentic framework that unifies RGB and spectral EO data within an MCP-based tool ecosystem, enabling cross-modal, multi-step, and quantitative spatiotemporal reasoning beyond pretrained MLLMs. Earth-Agent supports complex scientific tasks such as geophysical parameter retrieval and quantitative spatiotemporal analysis by dynamically invoking expert tools and models across modalities. To support comprehensive evaluation, we further propose Earth-Bench, a benchmark of 248 expert-curated tasks with 13,729 images, spanning spectrum, products and RGB modalities, and equipped with a dual-level evaluation protocol that assesses both reasoning trajectories and final outcomes. We conduct comprehensive experiments varying different LLM backbones, comparisons with general agent frameworks, and comparisons with MLLMs on remote sensing benchmarks, demonstrating both the effectiveness and potential of Earth-Agent. Earth-Agent establishes a new paradigm for EO analysis, moving the field toward scientifically grounded, next-generation applications of LLMs in Earth observation. More information about Earth-Agent can be found at https://github.com/opendatalab/Earth-Agent

Key facts. Cited by 42 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 33 of its 97 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Sep 2025.

Builds on

33 of 97 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025ThinkGeo: Evaluating Tool-Augmented Agents for Remote Sensing Tasks29 May
  2. 2025Accelerating Earth Science Discovery via Multi-Agent LLM Systems7 Mar
  3. 2024RS-Agent: Automating Remote Sensing Tasks through Intelligent Agent11 Jun

Other references · 30

  1. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
  2. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,655
  3. 2024SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videoscited by 2,784
  4. 2024Qwen2 Technical Reportcited by 2,076
  5. 2025InternVL3.5: Advancing Open-Source Multimodal Models in Versatility, Reasoning, and Efficiencycited by 1,419
  6. 2023ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Developmentcited by 893
  7. 2024DeepSeek-V3 Technical Reportcited by 724
  8. 2023MiniGPT-v2: large language model as a unified interface for vision-language multi-task learningcited by 617
  9. 2025Kimi K2: Open Agentic Intelligencecited by 523
  10. 2024Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? A Large-Scale Human Study with 100+ NLP Researcherscited by 348
  11. 2023SPHINX: The Joint Mixing of Weights, Tasks, and Visual Embeddings for Multi-modal Large Language Modelscited by 283
  12. 2024CodeAgent: Enhancing Code Generation with Tool-Integrated Agent Systems for Real-World Repo-level Coding Challengescited by 278
18 more
  1. 2025Model Context Protocol (MCP): Landscape, Security Threats, and Future Research Directionscited by 257
  2. 2024StableToolBench: Towards Stable Large-Scale Benchmarking on Tool Learning of Large Language Modelscited by 129
  3. 2024AgentTrek: Agent Trajectory Synthesis via Guiding Replay with Web Tutorialscited by 123
  4. 2025AlphaEarth Foundations: An embedding field model for accurate and efficient global mapping from sparse label datacited by 122
  5. 2024Large Multimodal Agents: A Surveycited by 99
  6. 2025AI-Researcher: Autonomous Scientific Innovationcited by 88
  7. 2025VideoRAG: Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Extreme Long-Context Videoscited by 76
  8. 2023Remote Sensing Vision-Language Foundation Models without Annotations via Ground Remote Alignmentcited by 71
  9. 2025ACEBench: Who Wins the Match Point in Tool Usage?cited by 66
  10. 2025ScienceBoard: Evaluating Multimodal Autonomous Agents in Realistic Scientific Workflowscited by 47
  11. 2022EarthNets: Empowering AI in Earth Observationcited by 40
  12. 2025From Mind to Machine: The Rise of Manus AI as a Fully Autonomous Digital Agentcited by 33
  13. 2024SM3Det: A Unified Model for Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Object Detectioncited by 22
  14. 2024Surveying the MLLM Landscape: A Meta-Review of Current Surveyscited by 20
  15. 2025RingMo-Agent: A Unified Remote Sensing Foundation Model for Multi-Platform and Multi-Modal Reasoningcited by 19
  16. 2025Towards LLM Agents for Earth Observationcited by 13
  17. 2024Learning Online Belief Prediction for Efficient POMDP Planning in Autonomous Drivingcited by 5
  18. 2025AGI for the Earth, the path, possibilities and how to evaluate intelligence of models that work with Earth Observation Data?cited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 4; 2026: 38.

42 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2025Designing Domain-Specific Agents via Hierarchical Task Abstraction Mechanismcited by 16
  2. 2025GeoZero: Incentivizing Reasoning from Scratch on Geospatial Scenescited by 13
  3. 2026OpenEarthAgent: A Unified Framework for Tool-Augmented Geospatial Agentscited by 13
  4. 2025BLINK-Twice: You see, but do you observe? A Reasoning Benchmark on Visual Perceptioncited by 9
  5. 2025CangLing-KnowFlow: A Unified Knowledge-and-Flow-fused Agent for Comprehensive Remote Sensing Applicationscited by 7
  6. 2026TerraScope: Pixel-Grounded Visual Reasoning for Earth Observationcited by 7
  7. 2026OpenEarth-Agent: From Tool Calling to Tool Creation for Open-Environment Earth Observationcited by 7
  8. 2026RemoteAgent: Bridging Vague Human Intents and Earth Observation with RL-based Agentic MLLMscited by 7
  9. 2026Physically Interpretable AlphaEarth Foundation Model Embeddings Enable LLM-Based Land Surface Intelligencecited by 6
  10. 2026CausalGame: Benchmarking Causal Thinking of LLM Agents in Gamescited by 5
  11. 2026Can LLM Agents Respond to Disasters? Benchmarking Heterogeneous Geospatial Reasoning in Emergency Operationscited by 4
  12. 2026TerraBench: Can Agents Reason Over Heterogeneous Earth-System Data?cited by 4
30 more
  1. 2026Agentic AI in Remote Sensing: Foundations, Taxonomy, and Emerging Systemscited by 3
  2. 2026CausalEvolve: Towards Open-Ended Discovery with Causal Scratchpadcited by 3
  3. 2026Characterizing AlphaEarth Embedding Geometry for Agentic Environmental Reasoningcited by 3
  4. 2026IC-EO: Interpretable Code-based assistant for Earth Observationcited by 2
  5. 2026GeoAgentBench: A Dynamic Execution Benchmark for Tool-Augmented Agents in Spatial Analysiscited by 2
  6. 2026RS-Claw: Progressive Active Tool Exploration via Hierarchical Skill Trees for Remote Sensing Agentscited by 2
  7. 2026TerraLogic: A Benchmark for Hierarchical Geospatial Reasoning in Earth Observationcited by 2
  8. 2026Agentic AI for Remote Sensing: Technical Challenges and Research Directionscited by 1
  9. 2026EO-Gym: A Multimodal, Interactive Environment for Earth Observation Agentscited by 1
  10. 2026SCI-PRM: A Tool Aware Process Reward Model for Scientific Reasoning Verificationcited by 1
  11. 2026Bidirectional Semantic Complementary Tool Retrieval for Remote Sensing Agentscited by 1
  12. 2026TianJi-Environ: An Autonomous AI Scientist for Atmospheric Environmental Researchcited by 1
  13. 2026RSMeM: Knowledge-Enhanced Memory Evolution for Remote Sensing Agents with Systematic Evaluationcited by 1
  14. 2026S2SServiceBench: A Multimodal Benchmark for Last-Mile S2S Climate Servicescited by 0
  15. 2026Earth Science Foundation Models: From Perception to Reasoning and Discoverycited by 0
  16. 2026AgroTools: A Benchmark for Tool-Augmented Multimodal Agents in Agriculturecited by 0
  17. 2026GeoDisaster: Benchmarking Orchestrated Agents for Operational Disaster Geo-Intelligencecited by 0
  18. 2026LandslideAgent with Multimodal LandslideBench: A Domain-Rule-Augmented Agent for Autonomous Landslide Identification and Analysiscited by 0
  19. 2026JL1-CC&QA: Extending the JL1-CD Benchmark with Change Captioning and Question Answeringcited by 0
  20. 2026An Agentic Interface for End-to-End Probabilistic Seismic Hazard and Risk Analysiscited by 0
  21. 2026Multimodal Large Language Models for Remote Sensing Image Understanding: Domain-Specific or General-Purpose?cited by 0
  22. 2026Obshazard-bench: Benchmarking Multimodal Foundation Models for Real-Time Disaster Intelligence from Raw Earth Observation Streamscited by 0
  23. 2026GeoForge: Non-Parametric Self-Evolving Agents for Earth-Observation Reasoningcited by 0
  24. 2026Cross-View Correspondence Is a Measurement Intervention: Two-Sided Validation for Agent Evaluation and Credit Assignmentcited by 0
  25. 2026EarthVerse: Benchmarking Scientific Agents Across Dynamic Earth Systems and Natural Hazardscited by 0
  26. 2026SimCRAFT: Distilling Remote Sensing Agents via Synthetic Trajectories and Contextual Retrieval-Augmented Fine-Tuningcited by 0
  27. 2026RingMoClaw: An Experience-Inspired Multi-Agent Framework for Self-Evolving Research in Remote Sensingcited by 0
  28. 2026Earth-Agent-Pro: Towards Real-World Full-Chain Earth Observation with Agentscited by 0
  29. 2026GeoSkill:Experience-Driven Hierarchical Skill Learning with Collaborative Revision forGeospatialAgentscited by 0
  30. 2026RS-Claw-Evolution: Environment-Feedback-Driven Evolution for Lightweight Remote Sensing Agents in Long-Horizon Taskscited by 0

Similar, not cited

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  1. 2025Earth AI: Unlocking Geospatial Insights with Foundation Models and Cross-Modal Reasoning
  2. 2026Experience-Driven Multi-Agent Systems Are Training-free Context-aware Earth Observers
  3. 2026EO-Agents: A Three-Agent LLM Pipeline for Earth Observation Hypothesis Generation
  4. 2025Geo-OLM: Enabling Sustainable Earth Observation Studies with Cost-Efficient Open Language Models & State-Driven Workflows
  5. 2026Bridging Perception and Action: A Lightweight Multimodal Meta-Planner Framework for Robust Earth Observation Agents ↗
  6. 2025Multi-Agent Geospatial Copilots for Remote Sensing Workflows
  7. 2026Bringing Agentic Search to Earth Observation Data Discovery
  8. 2026GeoR-Bench: Evaluating Geoscience Visual Reasoning