1. Preparing for the Production of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) for Biomass from Future Spaceborne Remote Sensing Missions: Is There A Role for CEOS-Carbon?
Hank Margolis, Eric Kasischke, NASA HQ Sassan Saatchi, Natascha Stavros, NASA JPL

2. There Are Several Planned Biomass Missions and All of Them Have a Common Objective
Quantify the role of terrestrial biomass in the terrestrial carbon sink to constrain climate and Earth system modeling and improve understanding of changes through time.
How much and where are terrestrial carbon sinks?
How do forest structure and disturbance regimes at large scales affect the carbon balance and forest resilience?

3. Woody vegetation structure and biomass information from spaceborne remote sensing
Canopy Height
Lidar
PolInSAR (polarimetric InSAR)
Interferometric SAR (single polarization) – requires bare earth DEM
3-D Canopy Structure (stand density, canopy layers)
Lidar – RH measures
SAR Tomography (Bistatic SAR, Repeat pass InSAR)
Biomass
Correlation with SAR backscatter
Correlation with Lidar RH measures
Correlation with canopy height (InSAR, PolInSAR)
Correlation with canopy structure (SAR tomography)

4. A Unique Opportunity: Eight Spaceborne Biomass Missions

5. Challenges for Mapping Biomass and Vegetation Structure from Space
For each mission, study sites are needed across ecosystem types that have the range of biomass levels required for the development, calibration, and validation of robust algorithms
Airborne and spaceborne data need to be collected over these sites
Additional data are needed from these sites include:
Biomass and vegetation structure data
Measurement of soil and canopy moisture
Tower-based microwave data

6. Synergistic Forest Observations
NISAR: Global Coverage, sensitivity to AGB < 100 Mg/ha
BIOMASS: Tropical and East Eurasia Coverage, Sensitivity to AGB > 50 Mg/ha
GEDI: Sampling between 50 deg North and South, Sensitivity to AGB > 20 Mg/ha
AGB
(50% area)
GEDI Coverage
> 100 Mg/ha
< 100 Mg/ha
< 20 Mg/ha
BIOMASS Coverage
No Woody Biomass

7. Need to Develop Partnerships for Establishment of Cal/Val Sites for Spaceborne Biomass Missions
Develop a coordinated plan to establish cal/val sites that can be used by all biomass missions
This planning process was initiated at a workshop at the Smithsonian Institute in June 2016
Organize joint field campaigns for the collection of field and remote sensing data that can be used for development of biomass/vegetation structure algorithms
AfriSAR (February 2016)
ABoVE (Summer 2017)
Semi-Arid Tropics (???)
Carry out research and organize workshops to explore synergistic use of multi-sensor data for mapping biomass and vegetation structure

8. NASA-ESA-Smithsonian Biomass Workshop Synergism and Calibration/Validation of Upcoming Missions on Global Aboveground Forest Structure and Biomass
Objective: To find synergy across the biomass communities’ objectives and develop a synthesized calibration/validation strategy for meeting these common objectives
51 participants representing biomass community:
The first “mission”
National Inventories
Research Plots (e.g., RAINFOR)
Large Plots (e.g., CTFS-ForestGEO)
Airborne LiDAR
Ecosystem Modelers
Satellite Missions:
GEDI (LiDAR)
BIOMASS (p-band SAR)
NISAR (l-band SAR)

9. Near-Term Deliverables
Recommended Actions
Need to identify people who have the mandate to coordinate across missions;
Develop network-level agreements for data sharing rather than each mission making agreements with each individual project
Meetings to check the status of cal/val as the missions progress
Coordinated supersite selection and data collection using all remote sensing techniques
Develop a common data portal or network of data portals to archive and distribute biomass data
Near-Term Deliverables
Report on the synergy of cal/val objectives across satellite missions
Report on the detailed suggested approach for selecting key locations globally and what is needed at those locations
Prepared by: E. Natasha Stavros (JPL, CalTech)

10. ABoVE Field Campaign
NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology Program is working with the NISAR Science Definition Team to establish a set of biomass cal/val sites in Alaska and northwestern Canada
NASA has also contacted ESA to use ABoVE for biomass algorithm activities for Biomass and SAOCOM-CS
Field sites exist in the ABoVE Study Domain to provide cal/val sites across key biomass gradients
Strong interest exists in the US, Canadian, and NWT Forest Services in providing cal/val sites based on existing forest inventory activities
Other research sites with biomass data also exist in non-forest sites
Airborne L-and P-band SAR and Lidar data will be collected in summer of 2017, and arrangements are being made to collect additional spaceborne SAR data in 2018 and 2019
Planning for this cal/val activity can be carried out by the ABoVE Science Team