NASA Creates World's First Global Forest Map Using Lasers

by Jerry James Stone, San Francisco, CA on 07.21.10



Scientists, using three NASA satellites, have created a first-of-its-kind map that details the height of the world's forests.

The data was collected from NASA's ICESat, Terra and Aqua satellites. The latter two satellites are responsible for most of NASA's Gulf spill imagery. The data collected will help scientists understand how the world's forests both store and process carbon. While there are many local and regional canopy maps, this is the very first global map using a uniform method for measure.


The laser technology called LIDAR was used to capture the data. It is capable of taking vertical slices of surface features. It measured the forest canopy by shooting a pulse of light at the surface and observed the time it took to return in comparison to the time recorded for the tree top.


"LIDAR is unparalleled for this type of measurement," said Michael Lefsky of the Colorado State University, responsible for capturing the data. He explains that it would have taken weeks to capture this data in the field where LIDAR can capture it in seconds.

The map is based on data from more than 250 million laser pulses collected over 7 years.

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http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/07/nasa-creates-worlds-first-global-forest-map-using-lasers.php

:( I have always assumed that, at the very least, the U.S. and Canada were much more forested.