THE BIOMASS MISSION: OBJECTIVES AND REQUIREMENTS
Paper i proceeding, 2018

The Earth Explorer Biomass mission will provide the scientific community with accurate maps of tropical, temperate and boreal forest biomass, including height and disturbance patterns. This information is urgently needed to improve our understanding of the global carbon cycle and to reduce uncertainties in the calculation of carbon stocks and fluxes associated to the terrestrial biosphere. It is also crucial for approaches to managing climate, such as the UNFCCC initiative known as Reducing Emissions through Degradation and Deforestation (REDD+), aimed at climate change mitigation through conservation and better management of tropical forests The required measurements are forest biomass and forest height at resolution of 200 m, and detection of deforestation at 50 m. Global maps of biomass are required with accuracy of 20% (or 10 t ha(-1) when above-ground biomass are less than 50 t ha(-1)). To achieve this Biomass will be implemented as a P-band SAR mission. It will exploit the unique sensitivity of P-band SAR together with advanced retrieval methods including polarimetric interferometry (Pol-InSAR) and SAR tomography to measure biomass, height and disturbances across the entire biomass range every 6 months. The mission will also support important secondary objectives, including sub-surface imaging in arid zones, production of a bare-earth DTM and ice applications.

REDD

BIOMASS mission

polarimetric interferometry

above-ground biomass

Carbon cycle

forest height

SAR tomography

Författare

Thuy Le Toan

Universite Paul Sabatier Toulouse III

Jerome Chave

Universite Paul Sabatier Toulouse III

Jorgen Dall

Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU)

Kostas Papathanassiou

Deutsches Zentrums für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)

Philippe Paillou

Université de Bordeaux

Markus Rechstein

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Shaun Quegan

University of Sheffield

Sassan Saatchi

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

Klaus Scipal

Europeiska rymdorganisationen (ESA)

Hank Shugart

University of Virginia

Stefano Tebaldini

Politecnico di Milano

Lars Ulander

Chalmers, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Mikrovågs- och optisk fjärranalys

Mathew Williams

University of Edinburgh

International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS)

8563-8566
978-1-5386-7150-4 (ISBN)

BIOMASS level 2 implementation study

European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESA ESTEC) (4000119231/167/NL/CT), 2017-02-01 -- 2020-01-31.

Ämneskategorier

Fjärranalysteknik

Naturgeografi

Klimatforskning

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2018.8518491

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2023-03-21