How Forest Carbon Data Helps Bridge Observation to Action

A groundbreaking and alarming report found that Earth's land carbon sink absorbed almost no carbon last year. Consider that for a moment: the ecosystems that have buffered our excess emissions for decades may not continue to do so indefinitely. While a slowdown has long been anticipated as climate change disrupts ecosystem function, its early arrival only increases the urgency of cutting emissions while conserving forest landscapes.

Emissions of fossil fuels are relatively straightforward to track, but tabulating the diverse and complicated pathways that store carbon across Earth's biomes is far more challenging. Extreme events like the 2023 wildfires across Canada's boreal forests have the potential to accelerate rising temperatures, thereby triggering other events that would further complicate carbon accounting.

It's now clear that the breakneck speed of ecosystem degradation is outpacing current strategies to model the carbon cycle. Data sources and methodologies that reduce this latency without sacrificing scientific rigor are more critical than ever as emissions continue to rise and our time to act dwindles. What's needed now is a more robust understanding of how Earth's carbon sinks and sources are changing at a more granular scale.

As The Guardian puts it, at least "118 countries are relying on the land to meet national climate targets." But these countries can't reach meaningful conservation milestones without a suite of tools to help inform their decisions. It will require coordination from every country on Earth using data sourced from on-the-ground measurements to satellites. But no effort is too large when the fate of the planet is at hand.

Part of this effort entails forming new coalitions across public and private institutions. Complementary partnerships like these can help overcome many of the historical challenges that threaten the effectiveness of each individually. This balance helps establish a more impactful approach to solving the planet's most pressing problems.

With COP29 in full swing, we wanted to highlight one of these dynamic partnerships and share some of the ways our Forest Carbon product, enabled by NASA's GEDI mission, is supplying governments and land managers with timely data to fill in the carbon picture. This dataset estimates aboveground forest carbon, tree height, and canopy cover across the world and delivers it to users every quarter.

The Earth's most effective carbon storage solution is also its simplest: trees. But conservation efforts run into the highly convoluted problem of acquiring reliable and frequent data at an affordable cost. Our Forest Carbon product equips users with remote sensing insights from global forests to individual trees. Here are some of the ways they've moved from observation to action.

Triaging conservation efforts

Almost 40% of the Amazon Rainforest remains unprotected, according to a Reuters report on a MAAP investigation using Forest Carbon data. These parts are particularly important for curbing climate change as they contain the biggest, densest trees and the most continuous canopy cover. But the longer they remain unprotected, the greater their chance of impact from fire or logging. Reports like these are pivotal for pinpointing where conservation efforts should focus.

^{Map showing areas of the Amazon with high aboveground carbon and which parts are protected. Courtesy of Reuters}

Understanding the policy drivers of carbon gains and losses

For a carbon sink as vital as the Amazon Rainforest, understanding why it's losing or gaining carbon is just as important as where it is. A recent MAAP report uses Forest Carbon data to first breakdown each area that's gained or lost aboveground forest carbon between 2013 and 2022 then dives into their causes. For example, gold mining has grown so extensively in Peru that calculations show the southern Peruvian Amazon has lost 11.3 million metric tons of carbon, much of it from illegal deforestation.

^{Areas of major carbon loss and gain across the Amazon between 2013 and 2022. Source: Amazon Conservation/MAAP, Planet Labs BC}

Building credibility in voluntary carbon markets

Voluntary carbon markets have grown in popularity as industries seek to offset their carbon emissions. But in recent years the credibility of these markets have come under greater scrutiny as the effectiveness of sequestration efforts is challenged. Enter carbon ratings agencies like BeZero, a leader in the industry that uses Forest Carbon data to evaluate the quality of different voluntary carbon markets so its customers know their offset purchases really count and won't get swept away in any greenwashing scheme.

Building a greener future

Not all that's gone is lost. And while deforestation has remained the overarching trend for decades in the Amazon Rainforest, it's possible that could turn around soon. The Economist reports on large-scale reforestation efforts underway in Brazil to provide credible carbon market credits. The Amazon offers an unprecedented opportunity: reforestation could provide 15% of the world's potential carbon-removal market, which McKinsey values between $300 billion and $1.2 trillion. The financial prospect, of course, pales in comparison to ecosystem restoration and carbon securely stored.

Reducing wildfire risk

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has a problem: how can they ensure that its vast utility network poses the lowest likelihood of starting wildfires? One promising answer has been to build risk models based on canopy height, enabled by Planet's Forest Carbon product. The number one source of utility-ignited wildfires is through contact with vegetation, so calculating the probability of ignitions based on vegetation height and distribution gives PG&E a good sense of where these fires are most likely to originate. Then they use Forest Carbon data again to better understand how the surrounding fuel load dictates how severe a wildfire might become and the risk it will pose to communities.

High quality, high resolution, and regularly updated data on forest structure and forest carbon is already a critical tool for users across various industries and will only grow in importance as challenges to sustainability, carbon markets, and mitigation intensify. The success of the work so far is encouraging. Planet is committed to continue building science-driven solutions to help customers achieve these goals and drive both valuable research and use case validation.

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