Labrière, Nicolas;
Davies, Stuart J;
Disney, Mathias I;
Duncanson, Laura I;
Herold, Martin;
Lewis, Simon L;
Phillips, Oliver L;
... Chave, Jérôme; + view all
(2023)
Toward a forest biomass reference measurement system for remote sensing applications.
Global Change Biology
, 29
(3)
pp. 827-840.
10.1111/gcb.16497.
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Abstract
Forests contribute to climate change mitigation through carbon storage and uptake, but the extent to which this carbon pool varies in space and time is still poorly known. Several Earth Observation missions have been specifically designed to address this issue, e.g. NASA's GEDI, NASA-ISRO's NISAR and ESA's BIOMASS. Yet, all these missions' products require independent and consistent validation. A permanent, global, in situ, site-based forest biomass reference measurement system relying on ground data of the highest possible quality is therefore needed. Here, we have assembled a list of almost two hundred high-quality sites through an in-depth review of the literature and expert knowledge. In this study, we explore how representative these sites are in terms of their coverage of environmental conditions, geographical space and biomass-related forest structure, compared to those experienced by forests worldwide. This work also aims at identifying which sites are the most representative, and where to invest to improve the representativeness of the proposed system. We show that the environmental coverage of the system does not seem to improve after at least the 175 most representative sites are included, but geographical and structural coverages continue to improve as more sites are added. We highlight areas of poor environmental, geographical or structural coverage, including, but not limited to, Canada, the western half of the USA, Mexico, Patagonia, Angola, Zambia, eastern Russia, tropical and subtropical highlands (e.g. in Colombia, the Himalayas, Borneo, Papua). For the proposed system to succeed, we stress that (1) data must be collected and processed applying the same standards across all countries and continents; (2) system establishment and management must be inclusive and equitable, with careful consideration of working conditions; (3) training and site partner involvement in downstream activities should be mandatory.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Toward a forest biomass reference measurement system for remote sensing applications |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1111/gcb.16497 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16497 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Aboveground biomass, Carbon, Earth Observation, Forest vegetation, Permanent plots, Representativeness, Validation |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10158177 |
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