Rainforest Carbon Monitoring Gets Boost From 3-D Satellite Mapping Model

Monitoring carbon emissions from remote tropical forests is becoming easier with the help of 3-D and satellite technology, giving a boost to efforts to reduce output of the global warming gas, scientists said.

Using light detection and ranging technology along with satellites, Greg Asner, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, and his colleagues developed 3-D vegetation maps and measured the amount of carbon stored and emitted through land-use change in the Peruvian Amazon, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The technique may help governments worldwide to craft legislation that would create tradable carbon credits worth billions of dollars from saving tropical trees, the authors said. Accurately measuring such emissions has held back progress on halting CO2 emissions from forests, Asner and colleagues said.

Destroying tropical woodland accounts for 17 percent of the global output of carbon dioxide as the trees burn or rot and release the greenhouse gas.

The researchers also determined that carbon storage and emissions were very different according to the type of vegetation as well as the ground underneath the forest.

“What really surprised us was how carbon storage differed among forest types and the underlying geology,” Asner said. Areas with older geology retain 25 percent less carbon than sites with younger, more fertile soil, he added.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Berlin at jvanloon@bloomberg.net.

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