The OBIWAN App: Estimating Property-Level Carbon Storage Using NASA’s GEDI Lidar

Forest managers increasingly require statistically grounded estimates of forest carbon storage at the resolution of individual ownerships (a few thousand acres). Carbon offset markets and general recognition of climate change mitigation as an ecosystem service provide incentive for monitoring carbon, but stand exams are costly, and varying methods may reduce comparability across ownerships. NASA’s GEDI mission provides high-quality lidar data across the country, and the Forest Service’s OBIWAN tool (Online Biomass Inference using Waveforms and iNventory) allows owners to generate and document GEDI-based estimates of mean carbon storage for their own land.

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