NASA is sending a barrage of laser pulses to Earth from the International Space Station to uncover the deepest secrets of the planet’s forests.
The GEDI mission, which was conducted by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, enables forested areas to be mapped in 3D in even the most remote locations for the first time.
The data makes it possible to study how the Earth’s forests are changing, what role they play in slowing climate change, and the effects of planting and felling trees locally and globally.
With the new GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation) data product, scientists studying ecosystems and climates can find their areas of interest quickly and study the structure and carbon content of forests with more precision than ever before.
The launch of the new biomass product comes as the GEDI mission is about to end in one year. It is the result of a major breakthrough in lidar (a type of laser) research in space.
GEDI is a high-resolution lidar instrument that was made to measure plants. From its position on the International Space Station, GEDI rapidly bounces laser pulses off the trees and shrubs below to make detailed 3D maps of forests and landforms. When the data is processed and plotted on a grid with a resolution of 1 km, researchers can study forest ecosystems, animal habitats, carbon content, and climate change.
GEDI has taken billions of measurements between 51.6 degrees north and south latitude in its first three years in space, at roughly the latitudes of London and the Falkland Islands, respectively.
The new data product combines GEDI data with data from lidars on the ground and in the air to make a global biomass map that shows how much plant life is in a given area.
Ralph Dubayah, GEDI principal investigator and a professor of geographic sciences at the University of Maryland, said: “We don’t know how much carbon is stored in the world’s forests, which is a big unknown.” Trees get the carbon they need to grow from the air. But scientists need to know how much carbon is stored in forests so they can calculate how much carbon will be released by cutting down trees or having forest fires. Carbon makes up about half of a plant’s biomass.
The new GEDI tool is not the first global biomass product, but it is the first to use advanced statistical models to give a clear description of the uncertainty in its estimates. This means that the GEDI biomass estimates also include information on the precision of those measurements. “That is, for every 1 kilometer estimate of average biomass, the mission knows how accurate that estimate is,” Dubayah said.
The GEDI team compared their results with forest inventories from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and data from the US Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis. They found that the GEDI biomass estimates were similar. to both. When the GEDI product was different from the inventories, it showed that more investigation and calibration was needed.
John Armston, GEDI validation and calibration lead and research associate professor at the University of Maryland, said: “We can use this framework to estimate the biomass of entire countries. For example, many countries in the pantropics do not have national forest inventories.
“We now have the tools to provide an estimate of aboveground biomass with known uncertainty, which can be used to support climate reporting and a wide range of applications.”
Armston said there is a lot of interest in using GEDI to look up forest definitions for carbon monitoring and to describe ecosystem structure for biodiversity assessments in many parts of the world.
“Resolving the structure of different forests and forest ecosystems with much more certainty will help not only to estimate carbon stocks, but also to understand their ecological condition and the effects of different land management practices,” he said.
How does GED work?
As the International Space Station orbits the blue planet, GEDI constantly fires lasers. These energy pulses make it possible to find out how forests are organized and how tall the trees are.
When the lasers sent out by GEDI hit the Earth, they first hit the treetops and then continue until they hit the ground. Researchers also look at how energy wave patterns change to learn about the composition of forests.
GEDI is a NASA tool that was sent to the ISS in December 2018. It has been working there ever since, and the mission was supposed to last until after this summer.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn