November 30, 2010 Vol. 3, Issue 11
NASA is supporting an intergovernmental group dedicated to understanding forests and their role in the global carbon equation.
On November 3, 2010, during the Seventh Plenary meeting of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) in Beijing, China, details were announced by the Office of Science and Technology Policy about the SilvaCarbon Program. The program sets out to strengthen global capacity to understand, monitor, and manage forest and terrestrial carbon.
SilvaCarbon, named after the Latin word for forest, is a flagship program aimed at promoting a better understanding of changes in land cover and the effectiveness of greenhouse gas emission mitigation efforts resulting from changes in land use. The program is part of the GEO Forest Carbon Tracking task, a component of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GOESS), which provides data and information about a variety of Earth observations to users around the world.
The international project will help promote transparency in national and international carbon mitigation processes in addition to meeting. The program also aligns with U.S. strategy to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation to enhance forest carbon stocks.
The program will combine the support of Australia, Norway, Canada, Japan, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, in addition to the United States. Support in the U.S. includes members from government, academia, industry, and other non-governmental organizations which include NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Smithsonian Institution, U.S. State Department, and U.S. Agency for International Development.
Read more from the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
