An airborne method for measuring biomass in forests and other ecosystems is as accurate as ground-based studies and can be used to create a national carbon map.
Gregory Asner at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, and his colleagues measured vegetation across 2.4% of Panama using an aeroplane equipped with a laser-based surface-detection system. They calibrated results by comparing data with 228 field plots and scaled up their analysis using satellite observations.
This produced the first high-fidelity map of carbon stocks across an entire country. The map has an uncertainty of 10% in areas measured from the plane, and 20% on average in other areas. The authors suggest that laser-based data can fill in gaps where there are no field data.
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Counting carbon from above. Nature 500, 8 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/500008d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/500008d