Forests are crucial elements of the Earth system and one of Earth’s most precious resource. Forests sustain a myriad of ecosystems that provide habitats for many flora and fauna, yielding rich resources for human development and providing an important sink in the global carbon cycle. In response to the need to monitor these ecosystems, ESA, NASA and DLR are developing the BIOMASS, GEDI, NISAR and Tandem-L missions. These missions will use innovative SAR and Lidar technologies to measure forest structure parameters (such as forest height and forest biomass) and their change with time on a global scale with much more precision than possible today. They are expected to be in orbit within the next five years, providing a unique and powerful combination of techniques to monitor Earth’s forests.
These missions will serve the expectations of a large and diverse scientific community and will meet a pressing need for information in the forests globally. Analysis of the global carbon cycle shows that the annual emissions of carbon from fossil fuels and land-use change are larger than the annual accumulations of carbon in the atmosphere and oceans. This suggests a largely unknown terrestrial sink for carbon. This terrestrial sink has never been measured. Measurements of the BIOMASS, GEDI, NISAR and Tandem-L missions offer a unique opportunity to reduce the uncertainties in both the global net emissions of carbon from forest cover change and global changes in aboveground forest biomass. This will significantly improve our understanding of the global carbon cycle, which will be of essential value for climate modelling and policy adaptation actions.
The objectives of this meeting are therefore:
- Review the latest status of forest biophysical parameter retrieval from space-based SAR and Lidar data.
- Identify synergies and complementarities between the different mission concepts.
- Identify key actions leading up to launch and beyond to get the best science and societal return from this unique nexus of space-based instruments devoted to measuring forest properties.
Last update: 8 February 2018