CMSWEST

Project Summary

Accurately measuring forest carbon storage and flux is necessary for national carbon accounting programs and can improve our understanding of earth’s carbon cycle. As part of the NASA Carbon Monitoring Systems program, we’ve developed a method to integrate field data, multiple lidar collections, aerial imagery, and Landsat time series to provide estimates of forest and woodland aboveground biomass (AGB) across the western USA. Our workflow will yield annual AGB maps for the years 1985 – 2020 at a 30-m spatial resolution. These maps are aggregated to the county-level and compared to AGB estimates calculated from independently collected Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) field measurements. In response to stakeholder feedback, we also will create annual maps of basal area, timber volume, and surface fuels. We will further analyze the Landsat time series to identify and map forest disturbances including harvest, fire, insects, and stress (e.g., drought), which will provide insight into disturbance trends and post-disturbance recovery.

Research Objectives

Objective 1

Quantify and map above ground biomass carbon pools and fluxes across the western US 1984-2020 using a multi-tiered remote sensing approach.

Objective 2

Recalibrate model-based forest carbon predictions leveraging the FIA forest inventory record, ICESat-2 and GEDI lidar using a model-assisted estimator.

Objective 3

Map additional management-relevant forest attributes across the western US to engage stakeholders.

Collaborators

Funding Agency: NASA

Dr. Andrew Hudak - USDA Forest Service (Project PI)
Dr. Chad Babcock - University of Minnesota (Co-I)
Dr. Grant Domke - USDA Forest Service (Co-I)
Dr. Van Kane - University of Washington (Co-I)
Dr. Robert Kennedy - Oregon State University (Co-I)
Dr. Arjan Meddens - Washington State University (Co-I)
Dr. Jacob Strunk - USDA Forest Service (Co-I)