[music]
Neuenschwander: We are looking at a profile of
ICESat-2 data over northern Botswana, which is described as a
semi-arid savanna woodland. In this profile the vegetation is
dominated by shrub mopani, which is typically in the two to three meter
range. And there’s also some mopani and acacia trees that typically
are in the four to six meter height range.
Something that scientists need to understand and quantify is where carbon is being
taken up and where it is already being stored. Because much
of the effort to mapping global biomass has been really focused in the tropics
where the trees are large and the biomass is high, many of these savanna
and woodland ecosystems tend to get neglected or are poorly
characterized in global carbon accounting efforts. This capability
to determine vegetation height should help reduce the uncertainty in
global biomass estimates.