Forest Service lends sampling expertise to new NASA mission

Photo Credit

Forest Service graphic provided by Sean Healey

Simulated 2-year remeasurement (in blue) of forest structure in the area of the Holiday Farm Fire in Oregon. Laser remeasurement will be useful in determining salvage potential, effects on habitat, and carbon storage impact.

Researchers from the Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA) have worked on a project for NASA's Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer (EDGE) mission, which measures changes in the world’s forests. The mission was competitively selected in January of 2026 for an expected launch in 2030.

EDGE will use lidar to gather vegetation structure information across all of the world’s forests. Lasers are particularly useful for this work because they penetrate the top of the canopy and can “see” both the height and vertical profile of the vegetation below. This data supports the mapping of habitat, carbon storage, fuel class, and timber product class.

Thousands of researchers and companies already use similar data from an ongoing NASA mission called the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI), which Forest Service researchers also co-proposed. Continuity with GEDI will allow EDGE to track not just where forests are appearing and disappearing, but also the effects of growth and degradation to so-called “stable forests.” Stable forests are defined as forests not already significantly disturbed and those not expecting near-future risks of disturbance.

Unlike previous satellites, EDGE’s advanced lidar system will allow remeasurement of forest structure in high-priority target areas such as forests affected by major weather events. One of FIA's priorities is to support this kind of research over small areas in the United States. EDGE’s remeasurement capacity will provide powerful ancillary data for this work and unique support among FIA’s clients for what changes they can expect on the landscape.

Why is the work important?

Determining a formal mode of inference to EDGE, which has a cost cap of $355 million under NASA's Earth Systems Explorer Program, is predicted to have cross-sector return on investment of $3-5 billion per year from the mission’s operations.