Image Caption: The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation lidar will reveal the 3-D architecture of forests, as depicted in this artists concept. The unprecedented detail of these measurements will provide crucial information about the impact that trees have on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Elizabeth Zubritsky, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

A laser-based instrument being developed for the International Space Station will provide a unique 3-D view of Earths forests, helping to fill in missing information about their role in the carbon cycle.

Called the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar, the instrument will be the first to systematically probe the depths of the forests from space. The system is one of two instrument proposals recently selected for NASAs Earth Venture Instrument program and is being led by the University of Maryland, College Park. The instrument will be built at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

As a global leader in research and discovery related to environmental sustainability, the University of Maryland is extraordinarily proud to be a part of this new venture with our partners from NASA, said University of Maryland Vice President and Chief Research Officer Patrick OShea. GEDI lidar will have a tremendous impact on our ability to monitor forest degradation, adding to the critical data needed to mitigate the effects of climate change.

GEDI will be a tremendous new resource for studying Earths vegetation, said Piers Sellers, deputy director of Goddards Sciences and Exploration Directorate. In particular, the GEDI data will provide us with global-scale insights into how much carbon is being stored in the forest biomass. This information will be particularly powerful when combined with the historical record of changes captured by the U.S.s long-standing program of Earth-orbiting satellites, such as Landsat and MODIS. The MODIS, or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, is an instrument that flies aboard NASAs Terra and Aqua satellites.

By revealing the 3-D architecture of forests in unprecedented detail, GEDI will provide crucial information about the impact that trees have on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Although it is well-established that trees absorb carbon and store it long-term, scientists have not quantified exactly how much carbon forests contain. As a result, its not possible to determine how much carbon would be released if a forest were destroyed, nor how well emissions could be countered by planting new trees.

One of the most poorly quantified components of the carbon cycle is the net balance between forest disturbance and regrowth, said Ralph Dubayah, the GEDI principal investigator at the University of Maryland. GEDI will help scientists fill in this missing piece by revealing the vertical structure of the forest, which is information we really cant get with sufficient accuracy any other way.

GEDI can do this because its a laser-based system, called a lidar, that can measure the distance from the space-based instrument to Earths surface with enough accuracy to detect subtle variations, including the tops of trees, the ground, and the vertical distribution of aboveground biomass in forests. Its immediate predecessors are Goddards Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) and airborne Land, Vegetation and Ice Sensor, known as LVIS, which is flown on high-altitude aircraft to measure forests, land topography, ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice.

Lidar has the unique ability to peer into the tree canopy to precisely measure the height and internal structure of the forest at the fine scale required to accurately estimate their carbon content, said Bryan Blair, the deputy principal investigator for GEDI at Goddard.

See the original post here:

New NASA Probe Will Study Earth's Forests In 3D