Bob Pliszka, VP- Operations & Forestry, ImageTree Corporation Advisor- Dr. Wayne Myers, Professor of Forest Biometrics; Director, Office for Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Services September 23 rd, 2008

Hardwood forests of East Rockhill township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania

 Significant increase during the last ~15 years in Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) in the US (and globally) From Environmental Protection Agency website.

 Currently there’s an ongoing global effort to reduce GHG levels  In the US, voluntary trading of forest carbon credits o Carbon emitters can purchase “credits”  US working towards a mandatory cap and trade system o Will require an effective means for measuring and mapping biomass levels

o Net increase in biomass from year to year is used to calculate CO₂ available for trading o One such example is the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) o Global system, the Kyoto Protocol, only recognizes afforestation credits  One area of focus is the mapping of forest aboveground biomass (ABG) o ABG provides an input into calculations of CO₂ o ABG provides insight into GHG emission levels

‣Traditional ground based forest inventory methods (Brown et al) o Translates directly into forest biomass  (Photo taken from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Website)

 Low resolution imagery (Hall et al)  o High resolution imagery (Neilson et al)  o (LiDAR) (Bortolot and Wynne, Van Aardt et al, Patenaude et al)

 Combination of traditional ground methods and remote sensed data (Brown et al) + = ABG

 Current commercial ABG solutions are: o Can be less cost effective for small woodlots Potential lack of incentive for small, non-industrial private owners o Coarse resolution and targeted for large scale; not always optimal for small ownerships High resolution remote sensed data may help…. o Readily available and current in certain cases o Provides reliable spatial information

 Spatially map forest biomass in East Rockhill township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania o Use of both:  Low resolution Landsat imagery (20-30 meter pixel)  High resolution NAIP imagery (1 meter pixel)  Compare and contrast the estimated biomass maps from the two datasets

 Remote Sensed Data o Landsat data (30 meter pixels) o National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery (1 meter pixel)  Shapefiles and coverages: o East Rockhill township boundaries o Hydrology layers  Forestry tools o Diameter tape o Clinometer o 10 BAF prism  Misc. o Applicable biomass equations o USDA FIA Data o Arcview GIS software

 Digitization of forest stand boundaries (homogenous areas) o Classification (forest vs. non-forest, mature vs. young, etc.) Methods

 Collection of low intensity tree measurement data

 For every forested stand o Estimation of tree volume and biomass (per stand basis) for both remote sensed data sets  Quantification of differences o Forested acres o Total estimated biomass o Spatial distribution of biomass  Creation of Thematic Maps and final write up

Task~ Start Date~ End Date Acquire all data9/29/200810/03/2008 Delineate forest stands in both data sets10/03/200810/016/2008 Classify forest stands10/17/2008 Collect and process ground data10/17/200810/24/2008 Obtain regional volume and biomass equations 10/25/200810/29/2008 Calculate volume and biomass for all forested stands 11/01/200811/07/2008 Create and analyze raster layers depicting biomass 11/07/200811/14/2008 Create thematic maps depicting results11/15/200811/22/2008 Final write up11/23/200812/04/2008 Submission for White Paper12/05/2008

 Relative ABG maps for East Rockhill township  Analysis and visualization of estimated ABG differences using high vs. low resolution remote sensed data  Potentially lead to further efforts to develop efficient and cost effective methods for small private woodlot owners

Bob Pliszka Sellersville, PA