Canadian Forest Service links

Biomass

		Taking Stock of Canada's Forests for Canadians:
		Mapping Carbon Stocks with Satellite Remote Sensing

Forest biomass is the mass of the above ground portion of live trees per unit area (Bonner 1985). It is a basic forest property linked to productivity and forest ecosystem processes, and is an important indicator of carbon stocks that will help determine the contribution of Canada’s forests to the global carbon cycle (Kurz and Apps 1999; Parresol 1999; Penner et al., 1997). Methods to estimate forest biomass from models, inventory and remote sensing data are being developed, evaluated, and demonstrated at several pilot regions across Canada (Fournier et al. 2003; Hall et al. 2006a; Labrecque et al. 2006; Luther et al. 2006).

This project will provide spatially-explicit information on forest biomass within a national framework of satellite land cover maps of the forested areas of Canada. Project outputs will contribute to Canada's National Forest Inventory (NFI) and provide data to the National Forest Carbon Accounting Framework.

Background
The project follows research and development work completed during the Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EOSD) of Forests project... [more]

Team and Partnerships
The project is a partnership led by the Canadian Forest Service of Natural Resources Canada, with funding support provided by the Canadian Space Agency and additional contributions from several federal and provincial partners... [more]

Objectives
The overall objective is to apply and demonstrate methods for mapping forest biomass over several ecologically-diverse regions in Canada... [more]

Methods Overview
Satellite remote sensing has been employed in many studies with varying success to estimate forest structure and biophysical parameters... [more]

• Pilot regions
• Data sources 

Results
Several research publications are available, and additional project results will be posted as they become available... [more]