Mangrove Canopy height and biomass estimates from TanDEM-X and WorldView Stereo photogrammetry

Temilola E. Fatoyinbo, NASA GSFC, lola.fatoyinbo@nasa.gov (Presenter)
SeungKuk Lee, NASA / GSFC, seungkuk.lee@nasa.gov
David Lagomasino, USRA-NASA, david.lagomasino@nasa.gov
Marc Simard, Caltech/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, marc.simard@jpl.nasa.gov
Carl Trettin, US Forest Service, ctrettin@fs.fed.us
Matthew Hansen, University of Maryland College Park, mhansen@umd.edu
John Poulsen, Duke University, john.poulsen@duke.edu

One of the main challenges to implementing carbon mitigation projects is measuring carbon, efficiently, effectively, and safely. In mangroves especially, the extreme difficulty of the terrain has hindered the establishment of sufficient field plots needed to accurately measure carbon on the scale necessary to relate remotely sensed measurements with field measurements at accuracies of 10% to 20% as required for REDD and other C credit mechanisms. Furthermore, most intensive mangrove sites are established in South-East Asia, Australia and Latin America, with a large gap in knowledge in African mangrove ecosystems.

Our goals are to develop the methodologies for, and produce the initial remote sensing products necessary to implement an MRV (monitoring, reporting and verification) system in Coastal Blue Carbon ecosystems in collaboration with local in country and international partners.

In this poster we present mangrove forest height and biomass retrievals using commercial satellite and Lidar data in Mozambique and Bangladesh. In particular, we will showcase canopy height models at 12 m resolution from TanDEM-X InSAR data and at 1 m resolution from WorldView-1 stereo imagery. Our results show that in certain areas where Lidar data is not available, other commercial data may be used to generate biomass estimates of use for long term carbon monitoring.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) Posters   (Mon 1:30 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Fatoyinbo, Lola: Total Carbon Estimation in African Mangroves and Coastal Wetlands in Preparation for REDD and Blue Carbon Credits ...details

Poster Location ID: 177