– No deadline for a legally-binding agreement
– No greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for 2020
– No goal for reducing global emissions by 2050
– No deadline for global greenhouse emissions to reach their peak
– No mention of aviation and shipping (specific sectoral agreement)

But that’s not to say COP-15 was a failure. There was some progress on monitoring, reporting, and verification; REDD; financing; and technology transfer. Details on each of these topics follow.

Monitoring, reporting, and verification: China, India, and other developing nations are to publish their emissions curbing commitments in annexes to a new global agreement. They would then communicate progress to those goals according to internationally agreed upon standards.

REDD: On deforestation, there should be the “immediate establishment of a mechanism, including REDD-plus” to mobilize capital from developed countries for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” and enhancing “removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests”.

Financing: Developed countries are to “support a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries”. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance. There will also be 30 billion dollars made available over the 3-year period of 2010 to 2012, balanced between climate change adaptation and emissions mitigation. Further, a new UN Framework Convention on Climate Change mechanism called the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund will be established to support funded “projects, programs, and policies” on mitigation, REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity building, technology development and transfer.

Technology transfer: A new technology mechanism will also be established to further accelerate technology development and transfer under a country-by-country approach. (This is in contrast to the existing CDM which takes a project-based approach.)

So what does this mean for remote sensing? Without a binding agreement, it may still be too early to tell. But cautiously speaking, it appears we are headed down a path where REDD (or REDD-plus) will be properly funded, which means the remote sensing technologies we discussed last week will be used to help measure and monitor forest carbon.

This, along with the emphasis on technology transfer holds real promise. By increasing the number of users skilled in the science and application of geospatial data, climate change policy can impact countless other areas of a developing nation’s existence, from infrastructure planning to emergency response to economic development. Now that’s something to be optimistic about in the New Year.

It’s the monitoring piece where geospatial comes into play. As addressed in our last entry about the REDD initiative, several remote sensing methodologies can contribute to large-area forest carbon measurement and monitoring, each with unique benefits. This week we are taking a closer look, reviewing the top-three technologies and briefly exploring their strengths and weaknesses:

Optical imaging: Offering low-cost, repeat coverage acquisition over large project areas, satellite-based hyperspectral and multispectral imagery has shown some potential for biomass estimation. Systems with sophisticated scheduling enable around 70 percent cloud-free coverage in equatorial regions, thereby reducing weather obstacles. And while satellite is proving a good source for monitoring REDD sites in Brazil, it alone isn’t a good source for carbon measurement. For that, you need tree height data and optical imagery provides only canopy-level information.

LiDAR mapping: Foresters have long used LiDAR systems to measure forest canopy and vertical structures. As an active sensor, airborne LiDAR data can be acquired night or day, providing very dense and accurate datasets. The downside to this approach is the high cost of acquisition and processing over large areas. Satellite-based LiDAR systems may help control these costs with wide area coverage and automated processing capabilities. The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) on NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) is one such example. Some studies show promising results, though clouds are an issue, and so is a general lack of ground height data. So, again, LiDAR may be a technology best suited for monitoring practices.

IFSAR mapping: Low frequency, long bandwidth IFSAR is an all-weather technology that provides high foliage penetration for near bare-earth elevation data, even in dense forests. When combined with higher frequency, short bandwidth IFSAR (which provides elevations of top surfaces), it is possible to detect the heights of individual trees within a forest. That’s the beauty of GeoSAR; it offers both views of the forest simultaneously and can also be used to identify forest type. This data, combined with biomass information on individual tree species, enables efficient and accurate forest carbon content estimations.

But GeoSAR isn’t a silver bullet. Given the relative high cost of airborne acquisitions in comparison to satellite sensors, IFSAR isn’t an ideal monitoring solution. It’s role is to provide accurate baseline information from which REDD programs can be evaluated.

Fugro EarthData published an article about using dual-band IFSAR for carbon accounting in the July issue of PE&RS. It’s a good source of information about remote sensing and climate change monitoring. And, if you want to catch the latest on COP-15, here’s a live web cast of the proceedings.

Next week: COP-15 wrap-up and its implications for remote sensing. Check back then!

This week, we are kicking off a blog series on remote sensing and climate change, a timely topic given the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-15) later this month. The first topic of discussion: carbon accounting.

In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, many experts agree that managing the world’s terrestrial carbon is critical to addressing the problem of climate change. Doing so will require first measuring and then monitoring carbon levels found within the world’s trees, soils, and peat. Carbon accounting of tropical forests is deemed especially important since they comprise the world’s largest natural filter of CO2 emissions.

Of course, for developing nations, where the majority of tropical forests reside, these forests provide a major source of economic development. Keeping these forests intact is the goal of the United Nation’s Collaborative Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD).

At the most basic level, REDD seeks to generate a new financing stream for sustainable forest management in developing countries, providing monetary incentives for conservation over development. A plan initiated by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last weekend may give a jumpstart to this concept.

Looking ahead to COP-15, Brown proposed a £10 billion fund, backed by wealthy nations, to assist developing nations in battling climate change. The funding proposed by Brown would go toward developing low-carbon energy sources, managing the effects of a warming climate, and halting deforestation. As part of this plan, Brown called for an international satellite monitoring system to measure compliance with the program.

And while Brown’s plan provides a step in the right direction when it comes to REDD, it may well oversimplify the solution. Is satellite technology the sole answer? Definitely not. There are a wide range of optical, LiDAR, and IFSAR sensors—airborne, as well as satellite—that offer a variety resolutions and data products to support tropical forest monitoring efforts. Each sensor-type has both benefits and drawbacks, but combined with in situ technologies, can be used to create very accurate maps to meet the goal of improved carbon management.

Next week, we’ll dig into the specifics of those technologies, so be sure to check back then. In the meantime, feel free to continue the conversation. Do you see forest carbon monitoring as an essential role to halting climate change? Have you been involved in any such research? What were the results?

Next month, leaders from 193 countries will meet in Copenhagen to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP-15). There’s a lot of attention on this year’s meeting as participants work to craft an ambitious global climate agreement that will begin in 2012 when the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol expires. Whether there is enough support to bring about a binding agreement at COP-15 is doubtful, however. Recent statements from the United States and elsewhere indicate there are still too many questions yet to be resolved. Even so, many see the conference as an ideal place to tackle the issues of “burden sharing” and related concerns so that an agreement can be signed in 2010, if not 2009.

So what has this got to do with a geospatial blog? Quite a lot, actually. A quick visit to the “Methods & Science” section of the UN Conference on Climate Change website shows several areas where remote sensing technologies will play an important role in the developing carbon market. Most notable is REDD, short for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries”. We’ve written about REDD before on this blog, and we’ll be paying more attention to it in the coming weeks as we begin a three-part series on climate change leading up to COP-15.

Topics in our series will include geospatial capabilities for carbon monitoring, with an emphasis on radar; legislation that will impact climate change policy both in the United States and abroad; and the push for REDD approval.

We hope you’ll log on and contribute to the discussion, which will be facilitated by GeoSAR Client Program Manager, Caroline Tyra, our resident expert in all things carbon. If there is a climate change topic not mentioned here, that you’d like us to address, let us know and we’ll be sure to tackle it.