Woods Hole Research Center

Distribution of Above-Ground Biomass in the Tropical Region of Africa:

Africa has one of largest remaining blocks of tropical humid forest in the world, second only to the Amazon basin. The threat of deforestation or degradation of these forests means a high potential for increased emissions. The Woods Hole Research Center has produced a first map of the distribution of above-ground biomass covering the tropical region of Africa by utilizing images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) satellite (1-km resolution) along with data from recent forest inventories covering the period from 2000 to 2003. This map is part of the pantropical mapping project, a three-year multi-disciplinary initiative at the Center.

Land Use and Land Cover in the Chesapeake Bay:

Restoration of the Chesapeake Bay has been the focus of a two-decade regional partnership of local, state, and federal agencies, including a network of scientists, politicians and political activists interacting through various committees, working groups, and advisory panels within the Chesapeake Bay Program. The overall health of the Bay has not declined since the restoration was initiated in 1983, but many of the advances have been offset by the pressure of increasing population and exurban sprawl across the watershed. The needs of the Chesapeake Bay Program are many, but the greatest is accurate information on land cover and land use change, primarily to assess the implications for water quality, examine various restoration scenarios, and to calibrate spatial models of the urbanization process. The work of the Woods Hole Research Center focuses on developing that information for use in this key ecosystem.

Land Use Change in Southeastern Massachusetts:

The Woods Hole Research Center’s work in Southeastern Massachusetts examines the changes in the area of developed lands, promotes land conservation, maps the expansion of impermeable surfaces such as roads and parking lots, and educates the public about the services that intact natural ecosystems provide for free. This portion of Massachusetts is unique in that it is home to rare and endangered natural ecosystems (such as pine barrens, cedar swamps, and sensitive coastal environments), a large sole-source aquifer, and extensive and unspoiled tracts of forest. It is also home to threatened areas of cultural importance such as cranberry bogs and key historical towns and villages. This project focuses on past, present, and future development and reasons why ecosystems processes should be considered when planning for the future.

Losing Cape Cod:

Woods Hole Research Center scientists study the environment of Cape Cod not only because it is a combination of ecosystems unique in the New England region but also because it is changing rapidly - more rapidly than any other region in New England. Moreover, as ecologists the Center’s efforts must be good stewards of local resources, as well as global ones, if the Center’s research and outreach are to ring true. Like most of the US settled early by colonists, Cape Cod has undergone many dramatic changes in land use (how the land is utilized) and land cover (what occupies the land, regardless of how it is used). The Cape is changing from a farming and fishing economy with seasonal visitors to a larger, year-round population that builds bigger and more homes in what remains of open space. Sprawl is here, fueled by demographic forces, weaknesses in zoning, and lack of vision. The project tracks land use and land cover change from 1950.

Modeling Land Cover Change in the Chesapeake Bay:

Predictions of future land cover are important for a number of conservation and restoration goals, including targeting areas for restoration, assessing the impacts of possible restoration and mitigation scenarios, and determining the vulnerabilities of various resource lands to future land conversion. Because the conversion of natural resource lands to developed land cover poses a significant threat to the Chesapeake Bay, Woods Hole Research Center scientists have focused efforts on simulating and predicting urban and suburban land use change.

Monitoring Land Cover and Land Use in Central Africa:

One of the key projects for the Woods Hole Research Center’s work in Africa is the collaboration with the INtegrated FORest Monitoring System for Central Africa Project (INFORMS). INFORMS was designed to monitor land-cover and land-use changes in the tropical rain forests of Central Africa through mapping of forest types, extent, spatial distribution, and biomass using an integrated approach of remote sensing and field observations. The goal is to integrate data acquired from satellites with field observations from forest inventories, wildlife surveys, and socioeconomic studies to map and monitor forest resources. Because cooperation among all stakeholders is necessary for a long-term and sustainable system of forest conservation and management, the project emphasizes partnership and coordination with international, regional, national, and local partners from the non-profit, governmental, and commercial sectors.

National Biomass and Carbon Dataset:

Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center are producing a high-resolution “National Biomass and Carbon Dataset for the year 2000” (NBCD2000), the first ever spatially explicit inventory of its kind. The dataset is being produced as part of a project funded under NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology Program with additional support from the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project (LANDFIRE). The primary objective of the project is to generate a high-resolution (30 m), year-2000 baseline estimate of basal area-weighted canopy height, aboveground live dry biomass, and standing carbon stock for the conterminous United States.

Pan-tropical Forest Cover Mapped with Cloud-Free Radar Imaging:

As international initiatives develop under the UNFCCC to provide a policy mechanism for slowing tropical deforestation, a baseline for evaluating and monitoring forest cover and associated biomass changes needs to be established across the forested tropics of Central Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The Woods Hole Research Center has initiated a three-year project focused on pan-tropical mapping of forest cover and associated carbon stocks stored in above-ground biomass. The project encompasses two mapping approaches: this approach focuses on the production of a pan-tropical database of high-resolution ALOS/PALSAR data and their use for pan-tropical forest cover mapping as baseline data for subsequent deforestation and forest degradation monitoring.

Pan-tropical Forest Carbon Mapped with Satellite and Field Observations:

Tropical deforestation and forest degradation account for an estimated 20% of the world's anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, a significant greenhouse gas contributor. Despite the important services that tropical forests provide, there is incomplete data and knowledge of their condition and coverage, and thus no accurate baseline for evaluating and monitoring future changes. The Woods Hole Research Center has initiated a three-year project focused on pan-tropical mapping of forest cover and carbon stocks stored in tropical forests. The project encompasses two mapping approaches: this approach employs the fusion of medium-resolution optical (MODIS) and lidar (GLAS) data. It is a first pan-tropical map of forest carbon derived using this approach, informed with extensive satellite canopy structure sampling calibrated with co-located field measurements.

Remote Sensing Tools in Boreal Regions:

As part of ongoing projects in the boreal and arctic tundra region, Woods Hole Research Center scientists and their collaborators are examining a number of different satellite vegetation products across a wide range of burned areas and assess them in the context of interannual variability in carbon sequestration by vegetative regrowth. Using imagery acquired from the Land Remote Sensing Satellite (Landsat), the IKONOS satellite, and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), WHRC researchers are computing a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) product, a fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) product, and a net primary production product (NPP). In addition to these products, the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) introduces a large suite of vegetation products that are regularly processed and released by the MODIS land science team. Center scientists have been collecting and analyzing a number of these products in order to assess their quality and applicability to monitoring forest regrowth in the boreal region.

Serving as a Resource: Datasets for Amazonia and the Cerrado:

This collection of Amazonian datasets assembled with funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA). This project was conducted in anticipation of the Large-Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment (LBA), an international research effort led by Brazil. The science questions addressed by LBA include: How does Amazonia currently function as a regional entity? How will changes in land use and climate affect the biological, chemical, and physical functions of Amazonia, including the sustainability of development in the region and the influence of Amazonia on global climate? These datasets are intended to facilitate both the LBA research as well as other studies that require spatially-explicit datasets for this tropical forest formation.