STV
NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE)
“Baseline biomass maps provide critical constraints on climate and carbon cycle models.”
Spaceborne Lidar & Canopy Structure
Space-based laser altimetry has revolutionized our capacity to characterize terrestrial ecosystems through the direct observation of vegetation structure and the terrain beneath it. Advanced information about the structure, distribution, and biomass of global forests provide critical ecological insights and opportunities for sustainable forest management.
Data from NASA’s ICESat-2 mission provide the first comprehensive look at canopy structure for boreal forests from space-based lidar as it is the only space-based laser altimeter capable of mapping vegetation in northern latitudes.
Coverage
Northern Latitudes
Resolution
30m Spatial Mapping
Biomass Density Modeling & Data Fusion
ICESat-2 Scaling
ICESat-2 biomass estimates were fused with Harmonized Landsat Sentinel (HLS) data to create a wall-to-wall data biomass product.
Disturbance Assessment
Quantifying carbon emissions associated with large losses in AGB due to logging, fire, and other landscape disturbances.
Dynamic Monitoring
Enabling the capture of annual changes in biomass as a function of growth, which may require a decade or more of coverage.
Disturbance Tracking & Carbon Quantification
The next phase of research will explore annual changes in boreal biomass. As ICESat-2 continues to collect data, vegetation change mapping becomes possible on a scale previously unachievable.
While forest growth is slow, disturbance results in rapid and significant losses in aboveground biomass. The time series of ICESat-2 is theoretically capable of quantifying the carbon emissions associated with these changes.
