During the 2021 Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) Plenary in September, the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) hosted a virtual side event looking at the importance of in-situ data when estimating carbon stocks.
The event presented current challenges and solutions in estimating carbon stocks and dynamics via innovative technologies. Presentations also underscored the need for extensive in-situ (on-site) data collection to implement new generation remote sensing-based methods and discussed strategies to make this a reality.
Attended by more than 100 participants, the side event consisted of four presentations covering the issue of estimating carbon stocks from the following perspectives:
- Donors: Andres Espejo from the World Bank explored the assessment of innovative technologies and their readiness for remote sensing-based estimation of forest carbon stocks and dynamics;
- Research Community: Mathias Disney from University College in London presented on forest biomass reference system from tree-by-tree inventory data (GEO-TREES);
- Private Sector: Dr. Allister Furey and Dr. Andrew Burt from Sylvera looked at next generation forest carbon measurements from multi-scale lidar (see presentation 1 and presentation 2); and
- Countries: Muri Soares from Mozambique’s National Sustainable Development Fund presented on Mozambique’s Permanent Plots Project.
Presentations were followed by a discussion session to further investigate the paths towards a global reference system for on-site data collection.