Powering Net Zero Commitments

Global tree mapping and carbon research get a powerful NASA boost

Share this article on your social networks.

A new method for mapping the location and size of trees growing outside of forests has led to the discovery of more than 1.8 billion trees in the arid regions of West Africa, including parts of the Sahara Desert.

Scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a team of international collaborators used powerful supercomputers and machine learning algorithms to map where trees are growing and how big they are.

The purpose of the study is to locate trees growing outside forests and to determine how much carbon they store.

It is the first time that extremely high-resolution imagery and powerful artificial intelligence were used to map and measure trees. The study lay the groundwork for similar mapping of the global tree population and carbon storage by trees.

The trees were mapped from above to measure their crown diameter – the width of a tree when viewed from above. The team is interested in how the size of a tree’s crown and tree growth density are influenced by rainfall and land use.

Environmentalists have always campaigned against deforestation and have raised awareness of it exacerbating climate change. However, trees that are not growing in forests have not been taken into account.

Trees are so-called carbon ‘’sinks’’ meaning they take carbon from the air to grow and store it in their leaves, branches, bark, trunks and roots.

These trees are important for several reasons. It may be that they are storing significant amounts of carbon, and they are an integral part of the local ecosystems and economies. They should also be protected. When humans burn trees and fossil fuels or cut down trees, the carbon dioxide balance in the atmosphere gets disturbed and you have the makings of global warming and climate change.

The scientist used commercial satellite images from the American commercial vendor of space imagery, DigitalGlobe. These images were so high-resolution that they could locate individual trees and provide data on their crown size.

One of the world’s fastest supercomputers, Blue Waters, at the University of Illinois, deep learning and 90,000 individually marked trees over a variety of terrain were used to train the model to recognize and spot individual trees over the study area. The model had to learn to distinguish between shapes that represent trees and those that represent other things like houses, huts or animals, etc.

An accurate tree count is part of the information stakeholders like policymakers and climate scientists need for conservation efforts. It’s also informative for scientists to know to what degree trees vary in size and density depending on where they grow.

“There are important ecological processes, not only inside, but outside forests too,” said Jesse Meyer, a programmer at NASA Goddard who led the processing on Blue Waters. “For preservation, restoration, climate change, and other purposes, data like these are very important to establish a baseline. In a year or two or ten, the study could be repeated with new data and compared to data from today, to see if efforts to revitalise and reduce deforestation are effective or not. It has quite practical implications.”

Related Posts

BreakingBoundaries
The most important scientific discovery of our time: NetFlix
Netflix states that the film, just released, centres around David Attenborough and Swedish Professor Johan Rockström's research and records “the most important scientific discovery of ...
Read More
climaterulings
4 Massive Climate Rulings Prove that Big Oil, Gas & Coal Are Running Out Of Hiding Places
3 global fossil fuel giants have been on the end of embarrassing rebukes over their inaction or inadequate action on ...
Read More
net_zero_carbon
New IEA report gives meaning to Net Zero – five key insights
The IEA has released its long-awaited roadmap highlighting how the globe’s energy sector could slash its planet-heating emissions to net zero in 30 years
Read More
Methane emissions
Lowering Methane Emissions Is The Fastest Way To Slow Global Heating- UN Report
The new UN report discovered that methane emissions can be halved by 2030 with existing technology and at a reasonable cost. A large proportion of ...
Read More
netzero
Increasing Climate Change Promises are Moving the Needle
Recent and increasing promises concerning climate change made by major countries could bring the earth a fraction closer to the possibility of a more stable ...
Read More
yosemite
Shocking results for nature’s climate change resilience – Retracing a century old wild life survey
When Berkely researchers following in the steps of Joseph Grinnell, a biologist who over a century ago developed a pioneering ...
Read More
ironmanvsclimatechange
Tech billionaires’ Ironman approach to climate change vs. planting trees
3 of the 5 richest individuals in the world, are all aiming to create new technologies which can lower the world’s carbon emissions and fight ...
Read More
climateaction 100plus
World First Net Zero Company Benchmark of the World’s Largest Corporate Emitters
Climate Action 100+, a $54 trillion investor coalition, released a report that evaluated several companies' climate change performance.
Read More
why do we need to conserve resources
74% of Economists Says Net Zero Actions are Economically Desirable
The majority of the international climate economists polled in February stated they had become increasingly concerned about climate change over the past 5 years
Read More