1. Beyond Forest Cover:
High-resolution Carbon Mapping
for REDD+
JOE MASCARO, GREG ASNER,
HELENE MULLER-LANDAU ET AL.
DEPARTMENT OF GLOBAL ECOLOGY
CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE
SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

2. Panama is a Thriving Economy
Panama had the highest
2008 GDP (both per-
capita and absolute)
among all Central
American nations (FAO).

3. Deforestation in Panama
Over the period from 2000 to 2010, Panama experienced 0.4% forest loss per year
(FAO), a lower relative rate than all but one Central American nation, and a decline
from forest loss in the previous decade.
Net changes in forest cover mask a higher loss of primary forest, however—much of
which is balanced by secondary re-growth and plantations.
Understanding these relative changes, beyond simply forest cover, is essential to
monitoring the welfare of carbon stocks and emission in support of REDD.

4. Carnegie Airborne Observatory

5. Laser-guided Spectroscopy of Tropical Canopies

6. Light Detection and Ranging or “LiDAR”

7. Three-dimensional Canopy Structure

8. Carnegie’s REDDlite approach
Satellite mapping of forest cover and changes in cover
using CLASlite
Habitat map
Field calibration of LiDAR
LiDAR assessment of carbon storage across habitats

9. Average aboveground carbon density, IPCC 2006
• Tropical
landscapes
are treated as
if there is
some average
carbon stock.
• What are the
local to
regional scale
controls over
carbon
stocks?

10. Forest Change - 1999 to 2010

11. Habitat Map by the Peruvian Ministry of Environment

12. Integrating Airborne and Field
Measurements

13. Converting Airborne LiDAR to Aboveground Carbon Density

14. Example CAO Lidar Data:
Interoceanic Hwy, Peruvian Amazon

16. Regional-scale Variation in Aboveground Carbon Stocks

17. Progress in Panama
LiDAR calibration

18. Carbon Mapping
in the Barro
Colorado Nature
Monument

19. Movie Time

20. Future Work
Habitat stratification
Dynamic change
Wall-to-wall carbon
storage

21. The CAO Team

22. Acknowledgements
 The CAO is made possible by the Gordon and Betty
Moore Foundation, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and
William R. Hearst III.
 Additional funding from HSBC, the Andrew Mellon
Foundation, the Grantham Foundation, the NASA
Biodiversity Program, and the National Science
Foundation
 The CAO team includes Dave Knapp, Guayana Paez-
Acosta, Ty Kennedy-Bowdoin, James Jacobson, John
Clark, Robin Martin, Aravindh Balaji, and others.