A recent paper titled, “Mapping and Monitoring Carbon Stocks with Satellite Observations: A comparison of methods,” in the journal Carbon Balance and Management summarizes the types of remote sensing measurements that are relevant to measuring carbon, along with limitations and merits, including optical, lidar reflectance and radar backscatter. Researchers at the Woods Hole Research Center have been studying the mapping and monitoring of carbon stocks in the tropics, and the role of satellites and remote sensing to measure and monitor forest change. The role of forests to fight climate change is tied to the fact that up to 30% of carbon emissions are due to deforestation and forest degradation.
“Mapping and monitoring of carbon stocks has often been regarded as beyond the current capability of satellite remote sensing technology, despite great need, partly because much of the research on this topic has historically focused on field sampling approaches. Nonetheless, mapping carbon stocks over large areas without satellite data is clearly problematic. No single sensor on any satellite mission, whether radar, lidar or optical, can be expected to provide consistently infallible estimates of biomass, but use of these measurements in a
synergistic fashion can potentially overcome the limitations of each.”
You can read the full paper from Carbon Balance and Management here.
