As the new Biomass satellite settles into life in orbit following its launch on April 29, ESA has released its most extensive satellite-based maps of above-ground forest carbon to date. Spanning ...

A perennial battle in Congress over the environmental effects of burning wood for energy has tipped again toward the biomass industry. The $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill declares forest ...

Space-laser AI maps forest carbon in minutes—a game-changer for climate science Estimating aboveground forest biomass key to climate change research Date: June 14, 2025 Source: University of ...

ESA's Biomass is the first satellite to carry a P-band synthetic aperture radar. Thanks to the long wavelength of P-band, around 70 cm, this novel radar is able to penetrate through the forest ...

Though effective, traditional ground-based methods for estimating forest aboveground biomass are labor-intensive, time-consuming and limited in spatial coverage abilities, Zurqani said.

Mapping forest biomass from space is a huge technical challenge, says ESA. They are complex structures – and different tree species and dense canopies make them difficult to measure, notes the ...

The European Space Agency's Biomass forest-monitoring satellite headed toward orbit early Tuesday morning (April 29) on the fourth-ever launch of the Vega-C rocket.

Annual forest re-growth may absorb a small portion of the stored carbon lost due to 400,000 tons of biomass burned, but that 100,000-hectare forest, no matter how well managed, is incapable of ...

Banner image: Dutch forest advocates Maarten Visschers (left) and Fenna Swart protest the burning of forest biomass for energy outside Vattenfall’s headquarters in Amsterdam in 2021.

The findings challenge previous conclusions that forest biomass in this region and, by extension, the accumulated carbon, remained relatively static in the millennia before industrialization.