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What is it All Worth?

“It’s amazing how many people really need our data,” Saatchi notes. “I’ve been getting bombarded by emails from people who want these maps.”

Kellndorfer’s inbox is full, too. Hundreds of ecologists, forest managers, academic scientists, city planners, land conservation groups, timber companies, climate modelers, civil engineers, biologists, and fish and game managers have sought maps on an almost daily basis. More are likely to come as international negotiators move closer to treaties and economic markets for managing carbon emissions and storage.

Photograph of a misty forest.

New information about forests around the world will help society predict and respond to climate change, both natural and man made. (Photograph ©2006 *clairity*.)

“The work we’re doing can help put an economic value on forests,” says Goddard’s Doug Morton. “Policymakers and economists want to know forest carbon stocks at very fine spatial scales, and countries naturally need to improve their assessment of stocks to participate in a forest carbon market. This is a high-stakes game in the policy realm.”

Developing countries are taking stock of the carbon in their forests as part of an effort in climate change mitigation called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, or REDD+. Scientific partners from the United States and Europe are often called on for technological assistance.

“Carbon trading markets are going to be partly based on selling credits for forests,” says Running. “If there is going to be billions of dollars in carbon trading, then knowing where the carbon is and how much of it there is takes on huge political and economic importance. We need a coordinated, global monitoring plan in order to make it legitimate.”

  1. References

  2. AsiaOne News (2011, August 7) Googling Earth to fight graft. Accessed August 30, 2011.
  3. Bonan, G.B. (2008, June 13) Forests and Climate Change: Forcings, Feedbacks, and the Climate Benefits of Forests. Science 320, 1444.
  4. Environmental Protection Agency (2010, June 22) Carbon Sequestration in Agriculture and Forestry: Frequent Questions. Accessed September 18, 2011.
  5. Lefsky, M.A. (2010) A global forest canopy height map from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer and the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System. Geophysical Research Letters, 37, L15401.
  6. Pan, Y., Birdsey, R., et al (2011, July 14) A Large and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World’s Forests. Science 333, 988–993.
  7. Running, S.W., Nemani, R.R., Townshend, J.R.G., and Baldocchi, D.D. (2009) Next-Generation Terrestrial Carbon Monitoring (PDF). AGU Geophysical Monograph Series 183: Carbon Sequestration and Its Role in the Global Carbon Cycle, 49–69.
  8. Ryan, M.G. (2008, June 4) Forests and Carbon Storage. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Climate Change Resource Center. Accessed September 18, 2011.
  9. Saatchi, S.S. (2011, June 14) Benchmark map of forest carbon stocks in tropical regions across three continents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 108, No. 24, 9899–9904.
  10. Space News (2011, February 25) Two High-priority Climate Missions Dropped from NASA’s Budget Plans. Accessed September 28, 2011.
  11. Tollefson, J. (2009, December 15) Satellites beam in biomass estimates.Nature 462, 834–835.

  1. Resources

  2. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2011) Terrestrial Carbon Cycle Research. Accessed September 15, 2011.
  3. Woods Hole Research Center (2011) National Biomass and Carbon Dataset. Accessed September 15, 2011.

  1. Related Reading

  2. NASA Earth Observatory (2011) Notes from the Field: Eco3D—Exploring the Third Dimension of Forest Carbon. Accessed September 15, 2011.
  3. NASA Earth Observatory (2011, June 16) The Carbon Cycle. Accessed September 15, 2011.
  4. NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (2011, April 8) Intro to Lidar 3D. Accessed January 4, 2012.
  5. NASA Earth Observatory (2010, July 22) Forest Canopy Heights Across the United States. Accessed September 15, 2011.
  6. NASA Earth Observatory (2008, February 2) Tree Canopy Height from 1650 to 1992. Accessed September 15, 2011.
  7. NASA Earth Observatory (2008, February 1) Ancient Forest to Modern City. Accessed September 15, 2011.

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