New project putting Forestry TEP into a key position in forest biomass and carbon monitoring

Demo locations of FCM project
Testing and demonstration areas of the Forest Carbon Monitoring project. Demonstration 1 (yellow) involves private companies, demonstrations 2 and 4 (blue and green) involve local to national level administration and demonstration 3 (red) involves international organizations.

Continuing the presentations of projects utilizing Forestry TEP, we are excited to tell you about the new Forest Carbon Monitoring (FCM) project to be launched in July. In this project, a forest biomass and carbon monitoring system meeting the requirements of different forestry stakeholder groups will be set up and piloted in Forestry TEP. This system will aim to provide means for forestry stakeholders to respond to increasing carbon monitoring and reporting requirements. Forestry companies may want to monitor carbon balance for forest sustainability requirements, carbon compensation schemes, forest certification or consumer demands. Administrative authorities can produce information for national and international reporting. The system will also enable European wide analyses on distribution and changes in forest biomass and carbon. The focus of the system is initially in Europe, but it can be expanded to other continents in the future.

The project is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and led by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Together with the eight partners (AFRY, European Forest Institute, Gamma RS, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Natural Resources Institute Finland, Satellio, Simosol and the University of Helsinki) the consortium has world leading expertise on forestry stakeholder interaction, forest biomass and carbon monitoring, modelling and large scale online processing.

The project will last for two years. It will build on the lessons learnt and advances made in the EU H2020 Forest Flux and ESA CCI Biomass and Assesscarbon projects. After initial stakeholder requirement review, several forest biomass and carbon monitoring methods will be evaluated during the first year. A selection of methods that best meet the varying needs of the user groups will be implemented in Forestry TEP. During the second year of the project, demonstrations varying from private company estates to European level mapping will be conducted and validated. Cost assessments for forest biomass and carbon monitoring services will be undertaken.

We will be monitoring the progress of the project and highlighting key moments here in the Forestry TEP news. More detailed information on the project can be found in the project website to be set up during the first months of the project.