Remote sensing for terrestrial live Carbon estimation: A tool for monitoring Carbon sequestration under Kyoto protocol

Abstract

With a realization of the adverse impacts of the global climate change, the scientists, planners and politicians have initiated transnational efforts to devise strategies and methodologies to arrest and mitigate the global warming impacts on the earth's surface. Kyoto protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has emphasized on the complimentary use of remotely sensed information for meeting some of the obligations under the Protocol. For undertaking regional and continental scale assessment of resources and other phenomena that facilitate better understanding and modelling of the carbon cycle, mosaics encompassing thousands of image scenes from space-borne radar satellites have been generated over different regions and are being exploited by the research community for varied purposes. There have been large uncertainties in global carbon budget mainly due to the inaccurate characterization of the forest changes, particularly in the.tropics. Exploiting the radar remote sensing for biomass estimation and "deforestation mapping in Southeast Asian tropical forests, it has been shown that radar has a tremendous potential for facilitating monitoring of anthropogenic changes and biomass production. The better characterization of the rate of change of the biomass and anthropogenic influences on forest cover would enhance the reliability of model estimates of the global Carbon cycle. With the launching of ALOS-PALSAR in near future, the efforts would be augmented for large scale biomass estimation and moitoring of Carbon sequestration at an operational level.