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Biomass to identify global distribution of forest

 Wednesday, September 7, 2022

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The European Space Agency’s new Biomass satellite, its seventh Earth Explorer in May 2013, will aid scientists differentiate wood from trees and offer vital data about the condition of our forests and how they are evolving. By lowering the level of uncertainty in the estimation of carbon stock and fluxes related to the terrestrial biosphere, the Biomass mission seeks to identify the global distribution of forest biomass. This information will expand our knowledge regarding how forests regulate the carbon cycle. Further, Biomass shall be crucial in supporting UN agreements aimed at reducing emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation. The Biomass launch is scheduled towards the end of 2022 and will last for five years.

BioPAL to support the development of Biomass mission algorithm

It must in order to fit a 12-metre radar dish that, when launched, fold up like an umbrella along its side before unfolding once in orbit at the end of the next year. The first satellite to operate on a technology called P-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument, it will determine the amount of biomass and carbon stored in forests. The spacecraft is humungous – several metres high and weighs more than a tonne. It is a radar with a long wavelength of 70 cm that, although requiring a large, unwieldy antenna, will allow scientists to view things from space that they have never been able to before: the wood from the trees. The dish’s foldable antenna is essential to its mission—to view Earth’s woods in a whole different way from the chilly vastness of space—so the engineering team is repeatedly testing the release and unfolding mechanism.

“It really will be quite a sight I think to behold,” mentions engineer Vicki Lonnon at Airbus Defence and Space. “You can’t really simulate what it’s going to be like in space fully, on the ground, so it’s all essentially modelling at this stage, so (it) will be quite exciting to see that happen.”

“If you looked at a forest with this wavelength, the leaves and little branches would be totally invisible,” says the project’s lead scientist, Professor Shaun Quegan, of the University of Sheffield. “It would just look like the framework of a tree. And that’s where the biomass is. And it’s measuring that biomass, especially as we face a climate crisis, that’s so crucial for scientists.“

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