Integrating regional and national scale biomass estimates in the NASA CMS

Robert E Kennedy, Oregon State University, rkennedy@coas.oregonstate.edu (Presenter)
Neeti Neeti, Woods Hole Research Center, neeti@whrc.org
Matthew Gregory, Oregon State University, matt.gregory@oregonstate.edu
Heather Roberts, Oregon State University, heather.roberts@oregonstate.edu

For the NASA Carbon Monitoring System (NASA CMS) to function as an integrated framework, we must learn from agreement and disagreement among products. Here, we describe spatial and temporal strategies to compare and integrate biomass products at national and regional scales. At the national scale, we document geographic methods to compare among the four currently-available maps of aboveground biomass, and show how spatial patterns of agreement and disagreement can lead to insight into strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches. At the regional scale, we are integrating Landsat time series and FIA plot data to produce yearly estimates of biomass with associated uncertainties for every year for the forested areas of Washington, Oregon, and California. These yearly estimates of biomass can act as a common currency to compare expected differences between the national maps, which were produce for different epochs, and further distinguish forest types where maps agree or disagree.

Associated Project(s): 

• Kennedy (CMS 2011)