Five-Year Satellite Mission Will Provide 3D Mapping Of Earth's Otherwise Invisible, Inaccessible Tropical Forests
Scientists are about to take part in a revolutionary mission aimed at creating detailed 3D maps of the world’s remotest, densest and darkest tropical forests – from outer space. The feat will be achieved using a special radar scanner that has been fitted to a probe, named Biomass, that will be fired into the Earth’s orbit later this month. For the next five years, the 1.25-tonne spacecraft will sweep over the tropical rainforests of Africa, Asia and South America and peer through their dense 40m-high canopies to study the vegetation that lies beneath. The data collected by Biomass will then be used to create unique 3D maps of forests normally hidden from human sight.
Less than 2% of sunlight reaches the forest floor in these regions, yet Biomass will study them in unsurpassed detail from a height of more than 600km. More importantly, the mission will allow scientists to calculate how much carbon is stored in the forests and measure how levels are changing as humans continue to cut down trees in the tropics and increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
In addition, Biomass – which has been built by a consortium led by Airbus UK and funded by the European Space Agency (Esa) – will map the sub-surface geology and topography of forest floors while it will also provide data about the rate at which biodiversity is being lost as forests are cleared for mining and agriculture.
“We need to know the health of our tropical forests,” Simonetta Cheli, director of Earth Observation Programmes for Esa, told the Observer last week: “We need to know the quality and diversity of its vegetation and the amount of carbon stored there. To get that information we are going to create 3D images of them – from the top of the forest canopy to the roots of its trees.”
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/apr/05/space-probe-to-map-carbon-content-of-worlds-remotest-tropical-forests
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