NASA has made available to the scientific community a map of the height of forests around the world with a spatial resolution of about one kilometer. The image will be a very useful tool to study the effects of climate change on forests and calculate the total carbon accumulated in vegetation globally.
The data has been collected thanks to the Geoscientific System of Altimetry by Laser of the ICESat (Satellite for the measurement of ice, clouds and elevation) of NASA. In total measurements of 2.5 million laser pulses emitted from space were used. In addition, the results were completed with other data and validated with 70 real measurements spread all over the planet, according to the responsible scientists in an article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research .
The map shows that, in general, the higher the elevation, the lower the forest height. In addition, this also reduces the greater the distance to the tropics, with the exception of the southern forests of Australia and New Zealand, where eucalyptus forests can reach 40 meters.
"It is important to know the height of the Earth's forests to properly estimate their biomass," the researchers explained. "The map is one of the best descriptions of forest height on a regional and spatial scale. However, in order to monitor the health of the Earth's forests in the long term, new satellites will need to be developed."
