Production of a harmonised biomass product providing estimates at a jurisdictional level globally. And provision of Multi-Mission Algorithm and Analysis Platform (MAAP) to support aboveground biomass research. MAAP will bring together relevant data, algorithms, and computing capabilities in a common cloud environment in order to address the challenges of sharing and processing data from field, airborne, and satellite measurements.
The action was started in 2022 with ESA, NASA, and JAXA participating. By 2023-2024, a consensus was reached that harmonizing products for a general/unspecified end use was inefficient. It was agreed that harmonising based on specific needs of countries and stakeholder use cases provided the clarity that was needed.
The activity then transitioned to Phase 2, having a focus on working with GFOI, FAO and national governments/forest reporting agencies to align products to meet specific stakeholder needs, such as reports for the UNFCCC. This approach differs significantly in that the idea is not to create a single harmonised product, but rather to support the combined use of these different datasets to meet specific needs.
The Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) has adopted much of this work, collaborating with countries to harmonize biomass maps with inventories.
For 2023 this actitvity will focus on intercomparison and validation of global biomass products from CEOS Agency missions.
October 2023: Article on the intercomparison of NASA GEDI v2 and ESA CCI v4 2020 products is under review.
November 2023: Biomass harmonization efforts will be focussed on aligning products with policy requirements to facilitate the update of AGB maps by countries for reporting to the UNFCCC.