When people cut down trees or fires burn up forests, the stored carbon is released, adding to the already high levels of carbon dioxide already trapped in the atmosphere and rapidly warming the planet. About half of a tree’s dry weight comprises carbon. To say 3D models of forests provide crucial information would be an understatement. “When it comes back, it looks like an echocardiogram with many more amplitudes, and so what we get is a three-dimensional view of the tree,” Dubayah says. The laser light reflects back from leaves and branches as well, giving the researchers a fuller picture of what a particular tree looks like, along with details on the tree’s weight, girth and canopy size. Image by NASA’s GEDI Mission, MAAP.īut the received data is much more nuanced and informative. Subtract the two, and we can see how tall the tree is.” Finer M, Ariñez A (2022) Lasers Estimate Carbon in the Amazon. “Then we measure how long it takes for the light to get reflected off the ground below the tree.
“Imagine you fire a pulse of laser energy and you start a stopwatch, and then you see how long it takes for that beam to hit the top of a tree and come back,” Ralph Dubayah, principal investigator at the GEDI mission and professor of geographical sciences at the University of Maryland, which led the mission, tells Mongabay in a video interview. Scientists calculate the measurements based on the time it takes for the laser beam emitted from the ISS to hit the surface of a tree and reflect back. Spaceborne laser altimeters have long been used to measure the topography of the planet’s surfaces, but the GEDI mission is the first to use it to assess trees by studying their dimensions and vertical structures. The program has gone beyond just observing deforestation from space, and has helped scientists and conservationists deduce the impact forest destruction will have on the climate. and Paraguay to improve the accuracy of their national forest inventories. “This data reinforces the importance of tropical rainforests such as the Amazon.”īeyond the Amazon, the GEDI mission has enabled countries like the U.S. The mapping of the Amazon “highlights some key areas for specific carbon-based conservation which represents a whole new line of conservation, in addition to previous biodiversity or ecosystem-based conservation,” Matt Finer, senior research specialist at the nonprofit Amazon Conservation Association, tells Mongabay in an email interview. The GEDI instrument, on the right, mounted on the International Space Station. GEDI also recorded very high levels of biomass density in the southwestern part of the Amazon rainforest, which lies largely in Peru. On the contrary, GEDI measured higher values of biomass density in the northeastern parts of the rainforest that cover the northeastern end of Brazil, French Guiana and Suriname - the latter two being the only regions where more than 50% of the Amazon remains untouched. This isn’t surprising, given the recent increase in deforestation rates. GEDI found that Brazil, home to 60% of the Amazon, has large swaths of land that recorded low levels of aboveground biomass density.
In the Amazon, where deforestation levels have surged in recent years, the GEDI mission (short for Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation, and pronounced “Jedi” like in the Star Wars films) has confirmed some well-documented facts, while also identifying pockets in the rainforest basin that could be part of carbon-based conservation initiatives. Since 2018, a first-of-its-kind mission by NASA has deployed lasers mounted aboard the International Space Station to measure and estimate the aboveground biomass on Earth. But what about the trees that remain standing? What do their dimensions tell us about our planet’s future? Quite a lot, in fact.
In the Amazon rainforest, data from the mission have highlighted specific areas that could benefit from carbon-based conservation.įor decades, satellite images have clearly captured how rampant deforestation is destroying the Amazon rainforest.The information helps us understand how deforestation contributes to worsening climate change via increases in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.Since 2018, the GEDI mission has employed lasers on the International Space Station to measure the biomass density of forests on Earth.
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