NASA To Create A Never-Before-Seen 3D Map Of Earth’s Forests Via SpaceX
Fighting climate change is a challenging task, but everything can rely on the Earth’s woods. Now, a team of researchers from NASA plans to send a high-tech reconnaissance operative to the International Space Station to create a never-before-seen 3D map of Earth’s forests and how much carbon can they store. The next SpaceX flight would deliver, set for today, December 4th, NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) will fly to space to perform the before-mentioned tasks.
NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) is the first-of-its-kind LIDAR instrument that would have the mission to map the world’s forests in 3D to provide scientists with better estimates regarding the forests’ biomass and how much carbon they can store, in a new achievement trying to fight climate change.
Similar to oceans, the Earth’s forests can absorb carbon from our planet’s atmosphere. Deforestation and other related traumas the Earth’s forest experience nowadays contribute to global warming.
NASA To Create A Never-Before-Seen 3D Map Of Earth’s Forests Via SpaceX
“It’s going to be hard to predict future concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere without that information,” said Ralph Dubayah from the University of Maryland and the leading scientist for NASA’s GEDI.
According to the scientists, we need to understand more about the carbon balance and how much of the CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by Earth’s forests to come up with reliable methods to stop climate change. To do that, NASA’s GEDI equips a powerful laser that can precisely calculate the number of trees on Earth.
Accordingly, using GEDI, NASA is up to create a never-before-seen 3D map of Earth’s forests. SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would launch the Dragon capsule of the same private space company that would deploy the GEDI instrument on the ISS.
“We can see and measure how tall the tree is, and we can actually see how dense are the foliage and branches as we go down,” explained Bryan Blair, NASA’s GEDI scientist at the US space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
Vadim is a passionate writer on various topics but especially on stuff related to health, technology, and science. Therefore, for Great Lakes Ledger, Vadim will cover health and Sci&Tech news.
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