Project Funding: 2014 - 2017

NRA: 2014 NASA: Carbon Monitoring System   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Four decades of deforestation, forest degradation, and agricultural use have fundamentally altered remaining forest fragments along the arc of deforestation in southern Amazonia. Forest carbon stocks in these frontier forests remain poorly characterized by existing forest inventory data or moderate resolution (0.25-1 km2) satellite data products. Nonetheless, these frontier landscapes retain clues to historic forest carbon emissions and the legacy of forest degradation from logging and fire. Improving our understanding of the long-term carbon consequences of forest degradation is essential for efforts to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and enhance forest carbon stocks (REDD+). The level of emphasis on forest degradation in monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of REDD+ activities in Amazonia fundamentally depends on the magnitude of net carbon emissions from logging, fire, and forest fragmentation. We propose to conduct detailed analyses of forest carbon stocks and land cover transitions in three frontier forest regions in the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon. The proposed study combines contemporary forest inventory data and extensive airborne lidar surveys with time series of Landsat data to evaluate landscape patterns of forest carbon stocks. Our major emphasis is the variety of forest carbon loss trajectories from different intensities and frequencies of forest degradation. We selected three frontier regions to evaluate the mosaic of forest ages and conditions from logging, fire, and forest fragmentation in old (Santarém, Pará, Brazil), established (Feliz Natal, Mato Grosso, Brazil), and young frontier forests (Colonel Portillo, Ucayali, Peru). Key research themes include 1) long-term changes in forest structure and carbon stocks from forest degradation; 2) lidar-biomass relationships in degraded forests; and 3) full carbon accounting of forest emissions, including deforestation, degradation, and secondary forest dynamics. The proposed research addresses the two priority areas in the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) solicitation (A.7). Specifically, we will use airborne lidar data from commercial off-the-shelf sensors, collected under separate funding from USAID and the US Department of State, to characterize Amazon forest structure and biomass and prototype MRV capabilities for intact and degraded forest types. Improving estimates of carbon losses from forest degradation is a key priority for NASA CMS and SilvaCarbon (Peru is a SilvaCarbon country), and a major impediment to progress on REDD+. Research activities will further develop methodologies to combine field measurements, airborne scanning lidar data, and satellite observations in support of REDD+ MRV. Finally, study results will provide validation datasets for ICESat-2 and proposed lidar missions under NASA’s Earth Venture program (EVi-2 and EVs-2). The proposed effort leverages four sources of existing support. Field measurements and airborne lidar data for study sites in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon will be acquired under separate funding from USAID, US Department of State, SilvaCarbon, and the Brazilian Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq). PI Morton is an unfunded collaborator on these existing projects, including his recent selection as a Ciência sem Fronteiras (Science Without Borders) Fellow by CNPq for 2014-2017. Additional funding for the proposed research through CMS would leverage these field and lidar data collections to address priority science areas for CMS and enhance the international impact of research activities supported by USAID and SilvaCarbon.

Publications:

Andela, N., Morton, D. C., Giglio, L., Chen, Y., van der Werf, G. R., Kasibhatla, P. S., DeFries, R. S., Collatz, G. J., Hantson, S., Kloster, S., Bachelet, D., Forrest, M., Lasslop, G., Li, F., Mangeon, S., Melton, J. R., Yue, C., Randerson, J. T. 2017. A human-driven decline in global burned area. Science. 356(6345), 1356-1362. DOI: 10.1126/science.aal4108

Bustamante, M. M. C., Roitman, I., Aide, T. M., Alencar, A., Anderson, L. O., Aragao, L., Asner, G. P., Barlow, J., Berenguer, E., Chambers, J., Costa, M. H., Fanin, T., Ferreira, L. G., Ferreira, J., Keller, M., Magnusson, W. E., Morales-Barquero, L., Morton, D., Ometto, J. P. H. B., Palace, M., Peres, C. A., Silverio, D., Trumbore, S., Vieira, I. C. G. 2015. Toward an integrated monitoring framework to assess the effects of tropical forest degradation and recovery on carbon stocks and biodiversity. Global Change Biology. 22(1), 92-109. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13087

Eitel, J. U., Hofle, B., Vierling, L. A., Abellan, A., Asner, G. P., Deems, J. S., Glennie, C. L., Joerg, P. C., LeWinter, A. L., Magney, T. S., Mandlburger, G., Morton, D. C., Muller, J., Vierling, K. T. 2016. Beyond 3-D: The new spectrum of lidar applications for earth and ecological sciences. Remote Sensing of Environment. 186, 372-392. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2016.08.018

Leitold, V., Morton, D. C., Longo, M., dos-Santos, M. N., Keller, M., Scaranello, M. 2018. El Nino drought increased canopy turnover in Amazon forests. New Phytologist. 219(3), 959-971. DOI: 10.1111/nph.15110

Morton, D. C. 2016. A satellite perspective. Nature Climate Change. 6(4), 346-348. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2978

Morton, D. C., Rubio, J., Cook, B. D., Gastellu-Etchegorry, J., Longo, M., Choi, H., Hunter, M., Keller, M. 2016. Amazon forest structure generates diurnal and seasonal variability in light utilization. Biogeosciences. 13(7), 2195-2206. DOI: 10.5194/bg-13-2195-2016

Noojipady, P., Morton, C. D., Macedo, N. M., Victoria, C. D., Huang, C., Gibbs, K. H., Bolfe, L. E. 2017. Forest carbon emissions from cropland expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado biome. Environmental Research Letters. 12(2), 025004. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aa5986

Nunes, S., Oliveira, L., Siqueira, J., Morton, D. C., Souza, C. M. 2020. Unmasking secondary vegetation dynamics in the Brazilian Amazon. Environmental Research Letters. 15(3), 034057. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab76db

Rangel Pinage, E., Keller, M., Duffy, P., Longo, M., dos-Santos, M., Morton, D. 2019. Long-Term Impacts of Selective Logging on Amazon Forest Dynamics from Multi-Temporal Airborne LiDAR. Remote Sensing. 11(6), 709. DOI: 10.3390/rs11060709

Rappaport, D. I., Morton, D. C., Longo, M., Keller, M., Dubayah, R., dos-Santos, M. N. 2018. Quantifying long-term changes in carbon stocks and forest structure from Amazon forest degradation. Environmental Research Letters. 13(6), 065013. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aac331

Longo, M., Keller, M., dos-Santos, M. N., Leitold, V., Pinage, E. R., Baccini, A., Saatchi, S., Nogueira, E. M., Batistella, M., Morton, D. C. 2016. Aboveground biomass variability across intact and degraded forests in the Brazilian Amazon. Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 30(11), 1639-1660. DOI: 10.1002/2016GB005465

2015 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• G-LiHT: Multi-Sensor Airborne Image Data from Denali to the Yucatan   --   (Bruce Cook, Lawrence A Corp, Douglas Morton, Joel McCorkel)   [abstract]   [poster]

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile
• NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) Project Profile