International Cooperation to Provide Consistent Landsat-based Estimates of Forest Carbon Dynamics in North America
Sean
P.
Healey, USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, seanhealey@fs.fed.us
(Presenting)
Gretchen
G.
Moisen, USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, gmoisen@fs.fed.us
Alberto
Sandoval Uribe, Comisión Nacional Forestal, Guadalajara, Mexico, asandoval@conafor.gob.mx
Michael
A.
Wulder, Canadian Forest Service, Pacific Forestry Centre, mwulder@pfc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca
Samuel
N.
Goward, Department of Geography, University of Maryland, sgoward@geog.umd.edu
Warren
B.
Cohen, U.S.D.A. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, wcohen@fs.fed.us
Jeffrey
G.
Masek, Biospheric Sciences Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, jeffrey.g.masek@nasa.gov
Robert
E.
Kennedy, U.S.D.A. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, robertkennedy@fs.fed.us
Scott
L.
Powell, U.S.D.A. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, scottpowell@fs.fed.us
Chenquan
Huang, Department of Geography, University of Maryland, cqhuang@umd.edu
The international borders within North America represent points of discontinuity in the depth of our understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Canada, Mexico, and the United States all have each recently made important enhancements to their systematic forest inventories, but differences in the form and reporting of these inventories has hampered their use in consistent, continental carbon monitoring. The NASA-funded North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) project is working closely with national inventories from each country, and is laying the groundwork for compatible estimates of the effects of disturbance on biomass loss and re-growth. Disturbance processes vary across the continent nearly as much as forest types do. NAFD is using time series of Landsat imagery, calibrated with systematic inventory data, to map and estimate the effects of those disturbances consistently across both time and space. The collaboration occurring with and among the respective forest inventories should increase the access of future North American Carbon Program efforts to high-quality ground data that is truly continental.
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