Michigan State Chosen to Do Satellite Carbon Assessment

The World Wildlife Fund selected MSU to partner in the $5 million, 18-month project to develop systems to measure, monitor and manage carbon in landscapes worldwide.

The MSU group is tasked with developing remote satellite imaging systems to measure carbon-sequestering activities in a variety of landscapes.

"This is funding our carbon-to-markets model," explained David Skole, a professor of global change science in the MSU Department of Forestry. "We're looking at the carbon stocks on the land. In trees and vegetation, 50 percent by weight is carbon in some form. That's why you can turn trees into fuel."

Carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, is the most prevalent greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Trees and other vegetation trap, or sequester, that carbon and in a world market where carbon emissions or capture are tallied and assigned value, growers in poor nations could profit from their land use choices.

Women clear spaces to plant tree seedlings on Mount Kenya. (Photo courtesy GEF)

Skole and colleagues conceived the project two years ago and have worked with the funder, the Global Environment Facility, since then to bring it to fruition.

They anticipate about $1.2 million as their share of funding for the brief pilot phase and expect another, follow-on phase to widen the scope to as many as 10 countries.

Skole and his team will help develop methods to establish carbon baselines and outcomes from land use activities in three developing countries in Africa and Asia.

Researchers aim to monitor forestry and crop activities in remote villages by satellite and calculate the value of carbon sequestration local growers provide.

These methods then could be adopted by development programs worldwide to help assess their environmental impacts, Skole said.

Ultimately, Skole said, that could allow even the remotest populations to participate in worldwide carbon markets such as the Chicago Climate Exchange, in which MSU itself participates.

The Carbon Benefits Project is funded by the Global Environment Facility, which joins 178 nations with international agencies, institutions and the private sector to fund sustainable development initiatives in developing and transitioning countries.

The GEF has put $8.3 billion of direct funding into such projects since 1991 and now aims to promote environmental sustainability as well as economic development, Skole said.

"What they need is a tool to assess their carbon and climate impact, both positive and negative," he explained.

MSU's technical work partner in the project is the World Agroforestry Center in Nairobi, Kenya, which will do site analysis on the ground. The Center for International Forestry Research, headquartered in Bogor Barat, Indonesia, is another project participant. The project is administered for the independent GEF and the United Nations Environment Programme by the World Wildlife Fund.

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