Workshop on Approaches to Remote Sensing For Vegetation Biomass Estimation
Workshop on Approaches to Remote Sensing For Vegetation Biomass Estimation
February 24-26, 2015, Brisbane, Australia
Vegetation biomass is a crucial ecological variable and an important component of the global carbon budget. Improved understanding of the magnitude, condition, seasonal-, and inter-annual dynamics of global biomass stocks will improve key quantitative assessments of the impacts of natural-, or human-induced alterations of the global carbon cycle. Accurate estimation of standing biomass dynamics across the landscape is also critical for researchers, national governments, NGO’s, regional agencies and the private sector keen to use such data for effective natural resource management, assessment of crop biomass, bio-fuels, bushfire-fuel or pasture biomass for animal feed.
Many institutions and countries are actively investing in-, and exploring approaches for more operationally integrating conventional ground measurements of biomass, and scaling these to broader regions with the aid of remote-sensing and models. While the choice of methodologies being evaluated at present depends upon a number of factors, including purpose of the data, density of available ground data, allometrics data, access to relevant remote sensing data and technologies, capacities and resources, and the potentials and limitations of various measurements and monitoring approaches, there are so far no widely accepted wide-area biomass measurement methods agreed-upon yet, that provide the necessary cost-effectiveness and routine mapping certainty at “policy and management-relevant” scales, for use by governments, researchers and the private sector at sub-national, national and global scales.
Workshop Objectives
The main workshop goals are therefore: (1) to discuss science and technical details and showcase current methods for remote sensing-based estimation of vegetation biomass, across multiple land-use types, at sub-national, national and global scales, (2) to evaluate the current levels of uncertainty against conventional in-situ measurements and models, as well as (3) their level of “operational applicability and robustness” for routine use by institutional or governments users.
The workshop will be co-hosted by:
- GOFC-GOLD Land Cover Project Office and the Ad-hoc Biomass Working Group
- The Global Forest Observations Initiative
- CSIRO
- Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) of Australia
Contacts
For more information about workshop content and schedule, please contact: Christiane Schmullius (GOFC-GOLD/Jena) c.schmullius@uni-jena.de
Date and Venue:
February 24-26, 2015, with an optional field day, 27 February at Brisbane, Australia.
For more information about workshop logistics (venue, accommodation), please contact: Liz Stower (CSIRO) Liz.Stower@csiro.au
Download the workshop program (2.5MB)
Read more at Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) of Australia
