This summer, I (Carter) have had the opportunity to work as a researcher at Upstream Carbon, a carbon project development firm, to find the best carbon model for their purposes. Working with Upstream and learning from their founder, Matt Sanda, has been a truly phenomenal experience! It’s been rewarding to work with and learn from such a wonderful team, and I leave next week with a great appreciation for the work they do to protect forests across the eastern US.
What have I been doing? Glad you asked!
The backbone of avoided conversion projects on the voluntary carbon market is the accurate accounting of carbon across the landscape. Basically, in order to price how much carbon is staying on a parcel of land, we need to know how much carbon is actually on said parcel of land.
Because of its importance, many different companies have sought to produce highly precise global maps of aboveground live, woody biomass. There are quite literally dozens of these models to choose from, yet there has not been a comprehensive, independent validation of any of these models against each other or against known, mapped biomass. So, how do we know which one is the right one for Upstream to use when evaluating a parcel of land?
That’s where I come in! This summer, I’ve been working to compare and validate different aboveground live, woody biomass models against one another and against truthing data across the eastern US. I am working to test models from Sylvera, Chloris, CTrees, and Planet and open-source models NFCMSv2 and v3, against derived biomass across ForestGEO sites and NEON aerial LiDAR flyovers.
The results thus far have been really interesting, and I look forward to writing this manuscript over the next few months! It has been a true joy collaborating with the folks at Upstream, and I look forward to future collaboration with their phenomenal team!