TY - JOUR
T1 - The Role and Need for Space-Based Forest Biomass-Related Measurements in Environmental Management and Policy
AU - Herold, Martin
AU - Carter, Sarah
AU - Avitabile, Valerio
AU - Espejo, Andrés B.
AU - Jonckheere, Inge
AU - Lucas, Richard
AU - McRoberts, Ronald E.
AU - Næsset, Erik
AU - Nightingale, Joanne
AU - Petersen, Rachael
AU - Reiche, Johannes
AU - Romijn, Erika
AU - Rosenqvist, Åke
AU - Rozendaal, Danaë M. A.
AU - Seifert, Frank Martin
AU - Sanz, María J.
AU - De Sy, Veronique
N1 - Funding Information:
This research has been funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of the CCI Biomass project of the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) (ESA ESRIN/Contract No. 4000123662), and also by FAO, GFOI, GOFC-GOLD, and Wageningen University. We thank those involved in the EC supported H2020 REDD+Copernicus project and those who contributed to GFOI Expert Workshops ( www.gfoi.org/rd ). M.J. Sanz was supported by the Spanish Government through María de Maeztu excellence accreditation MDM-2017-0714. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
PY - 2019/7/15
Y1 - 2019/7/15
N2 - The achievement of international goals and national commitments related to forest conservation and management, climate change, and sustainable development requires credible, accurate, and reliable monitoring of stocks and changes in forest biomass and carbon. Most prominently, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in particular require data on biomass to monitor progress. Unprecedented opportunities to provide forest biomass data are created by a series of upcoming space-based missions, many of which provide open data targeted at large areas and better spatial resolution biomass monitoring than has previously been achieved. We assess various policy needs for biomass data and recommend a long-term collaborative effort among forest biomass data producers and users to meet these needs. A gap remains, however, between what can be achieved in the research domain and what is required to support policy making and meet reporting requirements. There is no single biomass dataset that serves all users in terms of definition and type of biomass measurement, geographic area, and uncertainty requirements, and whether there is need for the most recent up-to-date biomass estimate or a long-term biomass trend. The research and user communities should embrace the potential strength of the multitude of upcoming missions in combination to provide for these varying needs and to ensure continuity for long-term data provision which one-off research missions cannot provide. International coordination bodies such as Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI), Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), and Global Observation of Forest Cover and Land Dynamics (GOFC‐GOLD) will be integral in addressing these issues in a way that fulfils these needs in a timely fashion. Further coordination work should particularly look into how space-based data can be better linked with field reference data sources such as forest plot networks, and there is also a need to ensure that reference data cover a range of forest types, management regimes, and disturbance regimes worldwide
AB - The achievement of international goals and national commitments related to forest conservation and management, climate change, and sustainable development requires credible, accurate, and reliable monitoring of stocks and changes in forest biomass and carbon. Most prominently, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in particular require data on biomass to monitor progress. Unprecedented opportunities to provide forest biomass data are created by a series of upcoming space-based missions, many of which provide open data targeted at large areas and better spatial resolution biomass monitoring than has previously been achieved. We assess various policy needs for biomass data and recommend a long-term collaborative effort among forest biomass data producers and users to meet these needs. A gap remains, however, between what can be achieved in the research domain and what is required to support policy making and meet reporting requirements. There is no single biomass dataset that serves all users in terms of definition and type of biomass measurement, geographic area, and uncertainty requirements, and whether there is need for the most recent up-to-date biomass estimate or a long-term biomass trend. The research and user communities should embrace the potential strength of the multitude of upcoming missions in combination to provide for these varying needs and to ensure continuity for long-term data provision which one-off research missions cannot provide. International coordination bodies such as Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI), Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), and Global Observation of Forest Cover and Land Dynamics (GOFC‐GOLD) will be integral in addressing these issues in a way that fulfils these needs in a timely fashion. Further coordination work should particularly look into how space-based data can be better linked with field reference data sources such as forest plot networks, and there is also a need to ensure that reference data cover a range of forest types, management regimes, and disturbance regimes worldwide
KW - remote sensing
KW - climate change
KW - carbon stocks
KW - reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD)
KW - sustainable development goals (SDGs)
KW - Climate change
KW - Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD)
KW - Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
KW - Carbon stocks
KW - Remote sensing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85061374917&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10712-019-09510-6
DO - 10.1007/s10712-019-09510-6
M3 - Article
SN - 0169-3298
VL - 40
SP - 757
EP - 778
JO - Surveys in Geophysics
JF - Surveys in Geophysics
IS - 4
ER -