# Planetary Feature Fields are Scalable Earth Representations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.37784 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37784/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 66 of its 100 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 66)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [MVSNeRF: Fast Generalizable Radiance Field Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15595/) (2021)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [KiloNeRF: Speeding up Neural Radiance Fields with Thousands of Tiny MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13744/) (2021)
- [HexPlane: A Fast Representation for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09632/) (2023)
- [LERF: Language Embedded Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09553/) (2023)
- [Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10703/) (2021)
- [Decomposing NeRF for Editing via Feature Field Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15585/) (2022)
- [Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05433/) (2019)
- [NeRV: Neural Representations for Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.13903/) (2021)
- [COIN: COmpression with Implicit Neural representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03123/) (2021)
- [Neural Feature Fusion Fields: 3D Distillation of Self-Supervised 2D Image Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03494/) (2022)
- [From data to functa: Your data point is a function and you can treat it like one](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12204/) (2022)
- [GeoCLIP: Clip-Inspired Alignment between Locations and Images for Effective Worldwide Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16020/) (2023)
- [Implicit Neural Representations for Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04267/) (2021)
- [SatCLIP: Global, General-Purpose Location Embeddings with Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17179/) (2023)
- [Panoptic Segmentation of Satellite Image Time Series with Convolutional Temporal Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07933/) (2021)
- [AlphaEarth Foundations: An embedding field model for accurate and efficient global mapping from sparse label data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22291/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Satellite observations, precomputed embeddings, and map products describe the same evolving Earth, yet are stored as independent, petabyte-scale data products. Their continued growth calls for compact representations of multiple products while preserving spatial and temporal detail. We introduce Planetary Feature Fields (PFFs), which exploit redundancy across data products by modeling them jointly as continuous functions of space and time at planetary scale. PFFs are spatially local explicit-implicit (hybrid) neural fields. Each field shares a factored feature volume---a decomposition of an explicit 3D grid with smaller factors---across products, while lightweight implicit decoders reconstruct individual products across multiple timesteps. PFFs reconstruct EO products over space and time more accurately than single-product fields at matched compression rates. At 1800× compression relative to the uncompressed source data, reconstructed features retain approximately 90% or more of the performance achieved with the original features on pixel-level segmentation, change detection, and patch-level classification tasks. PFFs can add new timesteps by extending their factored feature volumes and add new products by attaching new decoders, while leaving existing outputs unchanged. PFFs reduce end-to-end feature access latency by an order of magnitude relative to evaluated API and cloud-storage pipelines.