Kyoto and Carbon Project - A Global forest and

environmental monitoring using the ALOS PALSAR

Masanobu Shimada and Ake Rosenqvist

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Earth Observation Research CenterJoint Research Center, ISPRA, Italy

Forest Day, COP 13 at Bali, Indonesia

Dec. 8 2007

Heritage and objectives

The Kyoto & Carbon Initiative is an international collaborative project forming the continuation and extension of the JERS-1 SAR GRFM/GMFM project into the end of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-ALOS.

Aims to support information needs posed by the “3C’s”-The terrestrial Carbon cycle science community (CO2 & CH4 sources and sinks);-Multinational Environmental Conventions and Declarations:-UNFCCC Kyoto protocol (Forest and land cover change)-Ramsar Convention (wetland characteristics and disturbances)

-UN Millennium Declaration & UNCCD(water supply and desertification)-Environmental Conservation

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Themes

1)Forest theme• Systematic observation and archives• Annual changes of forest and land cover, biomass

2) Wetland theme• Spatial and temporal changes of wetland flooding pattern [Ramsar]• Monitoring the natural and human induced wetland disturbance.• Support the wetland inventory.

3) Desert and Water theme• Mapping of subsurface geomorphology in high-arid areas of water

prospecting. • Short term desertification mapping

4) Mosaic product theme• Global dual polarization mosaics at 50 meter resolution

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PALSAR (L-band SAR) advantages for the earth observation

Low frequency :1.27 GHz) : High penetration to the forest.High resolution: 10m : Potential for discriminationRadar : Day-night and all weather observableRadiometry and polarization : High visibilityImaging swath and revisit : 70/350km and 46 days.

Sabah, Malaysia, 4 March, 2007PALSAR full-pol mode. HH; HV; VV

ALOS

PALSAR

Duration 2006/5/16 2007/10/22 : 400000 scenes (70x70km) : 5 times global coverages

PALSAR Data acquisitions

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Deforestation

1993/6/261997/5/41997/7/312007/6/132007/9/13

Amazon Deforest Watch (Santarem) JERS-1 & ALOS

Acquisition Term

1993/6/26

2007/9/13

JERS-11993/6/261997/5/41997/7/31

ALOS2007/6/132007/9/13

Lat : S 2 34’Lon : W 54 45’

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JERS-1 SAR mosaic for Kalimantan over three years

1994-1996-1998

Deforestation

Firescar

Wetland

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Central Amazon Study Area

Remote Sensing Dataset: GRFM (Global Rainforest Mapping Project) Amazon mosaics

- > 3000 scenes acquired by NASDA’s JERS-1 SAR (L-band, HH-pol)- two basin wide coverages timed to low- and high-water stages- averaged to ~100m pixels and mosaicked by JPL

After Laura Hess, LBA-ECO Investigation LC-07

Amazon Wetlands Mask

Wetlands area: 850,000 km2

(17% of lowland basin; 14% of entire basin)

*

*NOT all flooded at

any given time

After Laura Hess, LBA-ECO Investigation LC-07

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Summary

The Kyoto and Carbon Initiatives is a JAXA-led international collaborative project

K&C science team from 18 country and 23 agencies.Aims to support the “3C’s”

Convention, Carbon, and ConservationGeneration of datasets and validated derived informationGlobal observation strategy implemented for ALOS/PALSAR

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Santarem