Space probe to map carbon content of world’s remotest tropical forests | Space

Scientists are about to participate in a revolutionary mission aimed at creating detailed 3D maps of the world’s latest tropical forests, and the tropical forests – from outer space. This achievement will be achieved using a special radical scanner for the radar that was installed on a probe called the biomass, which will be launched in the Earth’s orbit later this month.
Over the next five years, the 1.25 ton -ton -ton spacecraft will attract rain forests in Africa, Asia and South America through heavy curtains with a height of 40 meters to study the vegetation that falls under it. The data collected will then be used to create a unique 3D maps of forests that are usually hidden from human sight.
Less than 2 % of the sun’s rays reach the forest floor in these areas, however it will be studied by the biomass in unprecedented details of a height of more than 600 km. More importantly, the task will allow scientists to calculate the amount of carbon stored in the forests and measuring how levels are changed as humans are Cut the trees in the tropical areas Increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
In addition, the biomass – designed by a consortium, led and funded by the United Kingdom Airbus European Space Agency (ESA)-It will plan the geology without surface and topography of forest floors, while it will also provide data about the rate at which the biological diversity is lost where the forests are cleared for mining and agriculture.
“We need to know the health of our tropical forests,” said Simonita Celli, director of the Earth Monitoring Programs for ESA. observer Last week: “We need to know the quality and diversity of its plants and the amount of carbon stored there. To get this information, we will create three -dimensional images of it – from the top of the forest umbrella to the roots of its trees.”
Tropical forests play a decisive role in protecting the planet from some of the worst effects of global warming because they absorb a lot of carbon dioxide from the air: estimates indicate that it takes about eight billion tons and is often described as the green lungs of the earth.
But the removal of forests and environmental degradation now reflects this effect. The carbon, which is stored as soon as it is stored in huge quantities, is returned to the atmosphere, which increases the levels of greenhouse gases growth. The hot points include the northern regions of South America, sub -Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Ocean, where increased production of beef, soybeans, coffee, cocoa, palm oil and wood It leads to widespread removal of forests.
“Determining the problem is necessary to predict what will happen to the Earth’s climate in the coming years,” said Bjorn Romin, the world’s task world.
The biomass is scheduled to be launched from Esa’s Spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana on April 29 in A. Vegetable missile It will carry a radar known as the P-Pand artificial aperture radar. Its long wavelength signals will allow it to be allowed to register through curtains in order to assess the amount of carbon stored on the floor and branches of trees in the tropical forests in the world and evaluate how levels change. This type of radar has never been transferred in space, and the composition of the biomass of the giant 12m antenna that will be published when the spacecraft begins to sweep it on Earth.
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“What the task will do is effectively, it is the weight of the forests he studies,” said Professor Sean Coenghan, leader of the Biocytes Science Team, of Sheffield University. “We know that half of the weight must consist of carbon. So we will be able to weight carbon content in the tropical forests in the world from space, decisively, we get to know how much it changes over time. We will then know the carbon balance that flows to and from the air. This is very important.”
This point was supported by Chile. “We need to be able to predict what the Earth will look at with high temperatures. So we will integrate its data with AI and with other digital items of machine learning and will tell us what is likely to happen in the future. It will tell us what we face.”