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DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY

The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 2024.

GEO-TREES is launched at COP28

ForestGEO has recently launched the GEO-TREES consortium—the world’s first ground-based, equitably developed forest biomass reference system, designed to make global satellite-based forest carbon assessments actionable. This unprecedented multi-network collaboration will use innovative technology, partnerships and training, broad sampling and long-term commitment, and open-access data to provide the groundwork for devising strategies to mitigate climate change.

One of the largest trees on Barro Colorado Island in Panama
One of the largest trees on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. Tropical forests pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere where it causes global warming and store it as wood. But the amount of carbon stored varies depending on tree species, age, climate conditions and other factors. Verifiable estimates of carbon stored in forests are necessary to calculate carbon credits. (photo by Steve Paton)

The GEO-TREES project <https://geo-trees.org/> officially launched in December at the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28). Leading up to the launch, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) released a video series on social media in which STRI scientists explained the importance of the project and what they are set out to do. The motivation behind GEO-TREES is to determine how much carbon forests actually sequester. Models exist which use forest-imaging satellites to estimate how much carbon is stored in forests, but ground data has not been used to calibrate these systems. This is where GEO-TREES comes in – it is a network of forest plots and networks which will be collecting data in the field to calibrate and validate the models. 

STRI’s video series is available on social media at <https://twitter.com/stri_panama/status/1727359412774609265>, <https://twitter.com/stri_panama/status/1732473228294054177>, and <https://twitter.com/stri_panama/status/1732761055024251100>. A recording of the GEO-TREES launch at COP28 is at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx0bfDsTThE&t=1s>, which features Stuart Davies (ForestGEO), Cristián Samper (Nature Solutions, Bezos Earth Fund), Adriane Esquivel Muelbert (University of Birmingham), Craig Hansen (World Resources Institute), and Frank Martin Seifert (European Space Agency). The panel was moderated by Ellen Stofan (Smithsonian) and Josh Tewksbury (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute).

A recording of the GEO-TREES launch at COP28: