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Weighing Trees From Space to Measure Carbon Impact

How geospatial technology is enabling companies to act on climate change and transition to a nature positive economy.

It’s a great visual, weighing trees from space. 

The concept probably causes you to ask yourself how that’s possible, or better yet, why anyone would want to do it?

Turns out when trying to understand how much carbon is drawn down from the atmosphere by above ground biomass (trees) over time, it’s the weight change that matters, not the number.     

AGB change map, Chloris Platform. Image: Chloris Geospatial

That’s because the changes in the weight of trees (the biomass gains & losses) indicates how much carbon is sequestered as they grow, and how much is emitted with degradation and deforestation. Imagine a giant sequoia tree versus new growth forest in a recovering burn area. Until a new growth forest matures to a considerable degree, one giant sequoia stores much more carbon. This illustrates why counting trees is the wrong approach.  

Enter Chloris Geospatial, the company who introduced this technology to the market in 2021.  Compared to conventional forest carbon monitoring approaches, the Chloris technology brings new levels of transparency, quality, and consistency to forest carbon monitoring and accounting - with immediate scalability and cost-effectiveness that conventional approaches struggle to deliver. 

Kariba REDD+ Project in Zimbabwe, a net carbon sink, over time. Chloris Platform. Image: Chloris Geospatial

This matters to stakeholders who are trying to reliably assess, monitor and report the impact of nature based solutions, and foster trust in the integrity of forest conservation, restoration and reforestation projects..

To learn more, listen or watch our second episode of Nature Is with Florian Reber, Head of Partnerships at Chloris Geospatial based in Zurich, Switzerland (thought we filmed this IRL in Davos!)

A passionate back-country splitboarder, cyclist and overall mountain lover, Florian draws energy for his work with Chloris from time in alpine environments. 

Of note, in the summer of 2019, Florian mountain biked the Continental Divide from British Columbia through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado to New Mexico for a total of seventy one days documenting climate change in the Rocky mountains. See Tales of Change for more on his adventure!


References from the podcast, and broader inspiration:

Chloris Geospatial

Why We Need to Weigh not Count Trees from Space

Lara Birkes

My mission is to help individuals and organizations understand our reliance on the natural world, and to adopt behaviors that allow our planet to flourish.

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We believe that the digital transformation and related technologies are revolutionizing the very nature of the way we live and who we are. Done right, these innovations can help lead us to a better world. We're here to bring together the people and the tools to help you build it.

One key focus of our mission is to explore how the innovations of Web3, AI, and Quantum Computing can help to sustain the natural world and build greater efficiencies to grow our shared prosperity. We believe in creating a collaborative, inclusive, and sustainable community to explore innovative solutions. Solutions that will contribute to achieving bioregional and global prosperity by integrating our three interconnected worlds: the natural world, the human-made physical world, and emerging technologies.

Better Worlds seeks to explore alternative viewpoints through media, international conferences, symposia, essays and hack-a-thons that encourage and support the development of innovative solutions.