Carnegie Airborne Observatory: First high-res national carbon map - Panama

A team of researchers has for the first time mapped the above ground carbon density of an entire country in high fidelity.

This is the first high-resolution national carbon map. The highest carbon stocks in Panama are in the humid forests on the Caribbean side (red). 

The lowest carbon stocks are in developed areas (blue). 

Credit: Carnegie Airborne Observatory

They integrated field data with satellite imagery and high-resolution airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data to map the vegetation and to quantify carbon stocks throughout the Republic of Panama.

The results are the first maps that report carbon stocks locally in areas as small as a hectare (2.5 acres) and yet cover millions of hectares in a short time.

The system has the lowest demonstrated uncertainty of any carbon-counting approach yet—a carbon estimation uncertainty of about 10% in each hectare overflown with LiDAR as compared to field-based estimates.

Importantly, it can be used across a wide range of vegetation types worldwide.

The new system, described in Carbon Balance and Management, will greatly boost conservation and efforts to mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration.

It will also inform our understanding of how carbon storage can be used to assess other fundamental ecosystem characteristics such as hydrology, habitat quality, and biodiversity.

The approach provides much-needed technical support for carbon-based economic activities such as the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program in developing countries.

Panama has complex landscapes, with variable topography, and diverse ecosystems (ranging from grasslands and mangroves to shrublands and dense forests).

As a result, Panama is an ideal laboratory to develop and test a method for quantifying above ground carbon.

Lead author Greg Asner commented: "Three things make this national-scale study unique."

• Firstly, Panama is an outstanding place for testing carbon mapping approaches due in part to the long-term forest studies that have been undertaken by our partners at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).
• Secondly, we have applied the very latest techniques using high-performance instrumentation, resulting in demonstrably high accuracy at fine spatial resolution.
• Thirdly, the partnership permitted us to estimate our errors in a novel way, and we did so over every point on Panamanian soil.

In addition to Carnegie and STRI researchers, scientists from McGill University and UC-Berkeley combined measurement methods—an extensive and essential network of ground-based plot sampling, satellite imagery, and LiDAR measurements from the Carnegie Airborne Observatory—to achieve the unprecedented accuracy.

H1N! Swine Flu Devastating South America

A passenger takes precautions at Ezeiza International Airport, Argentina, as the swine flu pandemic intensifies (Image: Daniel Garcia / AFP / Getty Images)

THE swine flu pandemic is intensifying in South America and finding little resistance. The US White House will meet with state representatives on 9 July to discuss preparations for the autumn flu season in the US. The UK has shifted its response from protection, to dealing with the impact of widespread infection in the UK.

Meanwhile, in South America, in the midst of its winter flu season, swine H1N1 virus seems to be replacing the seasonal flu viruses that circulated till now, a classic pandemic behaviour. This raises further concerns that seasonal flu vaccine, which some companies are still making, may be useless when the northern hemisphere's flu season arrives later this year.

In the flu pandemics of 1918, 1957 and 1968, the pandemic virus completely replaced the circulating seasonal flu but in 1977, an accidentally released mild H1N1 virus simply circulated alongside the existing flu, H3N2. So, no one is sure how this swine flu H1N1 will behave. It is overwhelming what is not known about this influenza and its potential devastating impact on the civilised world.

If it does not replace the seasonal viruses - the milder H1N1 and the H3N2 - the world faces the prospect of being infected by all three viruses at once. This would be a very complicated and dangerous scenario: both seasonal and pandemic vaccines would be needed and differing age groups of people would be affected. Let's hope that what is happening in South America, is not indicative of this influenza's emerging profile.

In North America, swine flu also dominates: as expected, more than 98 per cent of flu cases genotyped in the US in late June were caused by the pandemic virus. While seasonal flu viruses normally die out in the summer, the pandemic virus has the advantage that few people have any immunity to it.

Panama protest rally against President Martin Torrijos

A woman holding a cross stands in front of a mock coffin as patients and relatives stage a protest rally against the government of Panama’s President Martin Torrijos over the poisoning in 2006 of at least 174 people.

Cold medicine provided by the social security authorities containing the industrial toxic substance diethylene glycoldiethylene poisoned 115 of them fatally. Survivors demanded compensation and the improvement of the national health system

Alejandro Bolivar/EPA