Aboveground biomass estimation in the context of REDD

An article on estimating aboveground biomass in Indonesia's tropical forests on the basis of SAR data was recently published in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment. REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) is a climate change mitigation mechanism which aims at avoided deforestation. It was accepted at the climate change conference in Cancun last December and requires a reliable assessment of aboveground biomass. Especially tropical forests store huge amounts of carbon and are therefore in the focus of REDD.

The results of this study demonstrate that the combined use of multi-temporal TerraSAR-X and ALOS PALSAR data can provide large-scale aboveground biomass estimations for tropical forests also showing the spatial distribution over the whole biomass up to 600 t/ha. 

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