Earth’s forests play a critical role in keeping our planet habitable.
Often called the “lungs of the Earth,” forests cover nearly one-third of the planet and absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They also produce oxygen so we can breathe. According to NASA, forests worldwide absorb about 7.6 billion metric tons of CO2 each year.
But that’s just an estimate because human industrial activities continue to put more Earth-warning greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Understanding how our forests respond to the increases in greenhouse gas emissions and threats to their existence, such as deforestation and wildfires, is challenging because of the dense vegetation and hard-to-penetrate canopies.
That’s about that change.
On Tuesday, the European Space Agency (ESA) put its Biomass satellite into orbit. Biomass is carrying the first P-band synthetic aperture radar in space. You can think of it like an MRI machine designed to provide 3D maps of the planet’s forests. The radar can penetrate deep into the vegetation and provide scientists with data about the state of our forests, how they are absorbing and emitting carbon and how human activities like deforestation and wildfires are changing their behaviors.
“With Biomass, we are poised to gain vital new data on how much carbon is stored in the world’s forests, helping to fill key gaps in our knowledge of the carbon cycle and, ultimately, Earth’s climate system,” Simonetta Cheli, ESA director of earth observation programmes, said in a statement.
When left untouched, forests store more carbon than they emit. But because of human-driven land use changes, such as degradation and deforestation, especially in tropical areas, forests are releasing more and more carbon back into the atmosphere, making climate change worse.
“This new mission will advance our ability to quantify forest carbon stocks and fluxes, which is key to understanding and assessing the impacts of climate change,” ESA Biomass project manager Michael Fehringer said in a statement.
The Biomass satellite will measure the trunks, branches and stems of the trees that populate the planet’s forests. ESA says these measurements will serve as a proxy for determining carbon storage, which is the key goal of the mission.
According to ESA, 50 companies, including project lead Airbus UK, contributed to developing the satellite. Mission controllers will spend the coming days verifying that the satellite is functioning correctly and that all its systems are working as intended. Once in operation, the mission will take five-and-a-half years to complete.
