K. Dana Chadwick: Carbon Geographies

Carbon Geographies

Upon joining Greg Asner's lab at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology I had the opportunity to work with the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (now the Global Airborne Observatory) team on a series of projects examining the controls on aboveground carbon distributions in tropical forests. These studies utilized the relationship between LiDAR derived tree height data and carbon inventory plots to estimate carbon distributions within the flight areas. We then used these estimates, and their relationships to satellite-derived elevation and reflectance data, to scale these understandings to a regional level. It was through this work that I became interested in the relationship between topographic gradients and ecosystem properties and wanted to dig deeper to develop an understanding of the biogeochemical and geomorphic processes underlying these relationships.

Findings & Highlights

2014

High Resolution Carbon Geography of Peru

The CAO team conducted a series of studies exploring the carbon geography of the Peruvian Amazon. The mapping approach, which utilized random forest machine learning, was published in PLoS ONE. An assessment of carbon conservation at the national level was published in PNAS and a full report was published in collaboration with the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment.

July 25, 2012

Paper: Colombian Amazon Forest Carbon Distributions

We expanded on the work done in Madagascar to map aboveground biomass in a region of the Colombian Amazon designated as a REDD+ pilot project area by the Colombian Institute for Hydrological, Meteorological, and Environmental Studies (IDEAM). The findings were published in Biogeosciences.

January 12, 2012

Paper: Controls on Aboveground Carbon Storage in Madagascar

This was the first carbon geography study that I worked on with the CAO team. I organized and analyzed SRTM topographic data that facilitated the scaling of LiDAR-derived biomass beyond the extent of the airborne collections. These findings were published in Carbon Balance and Management

About

Acknowledgements

The opportunity to work on these projects was amazing and helped me develop the research direction that I pursued for my dissertation work. I am indebted to Greg and the entire CAO team for all they taught me and the incredible experiences I had with them.