Biomass and Carbon Residence Time Estimation by Remote Sensing and Direct Measurements at the Santa Rita Experimental Research Station 1 Theodore Jones University of Arizona Space Grant Intern Joel Biederman, Russ Scott USDA Agricultural Research Service Why Measure Carbon Residence Time? 2 t r = carbon stored / photosynthesis role of an ecosystem in climate change stored carbon can account for decades worth of photosynthesis changes in the environment can release quickly Below Ground Biomass Above Ground Biomass Santa Rita Experimental Research Station Flux Tower Site 3 Measuring Biomass 4 Allometric Relationships Percent Cover Estimates Manual Measurements Biomass = carbon contained in the plants LIDAR/Wavelet Method Based Height Tree crown areas (Aerial photographs) Diameter/Height BiomassBiomass Aerial Photo-based Methods 5 Percent of the terrain covered by vegetation Estimates of individual tree crown areas Visual photography Bare soil Tree Mixed/grass tree canopy Flux tower Airborne LiDAR Method 6 Lidar Dataset Wavelet Method Results (Swetnam et. al. 2014) 7 Biomass estimation method BiomassBiomass Total Biomass and Residence Times 8 Input Photosynthesis 0.3 kg/m 2 per year Mean Carbon Residence Time 25 to 35 years t r = carbon stored / photosynthesis Above ground biomass kg m 2 to 3.1 kg m 2 Below Ground Biomass 0.82 kg m 2 Conclusions 9 The estimated biomass varies from 1.7 kg/m^2 to 3.1 kg/m^2 among the methods. Mean carbon residence time is 25.4 to 34.6 years in spite of 45% uncertainty in aboveground biomass Future steps for this project will include: estimating the biomass of understory plants expanding the analysis to other sites and ecosystem types Biomass and Carbon Residence Time Estimation by Remote Sensing and Direct Measurements at the Santa Rita Experimental Research Station 10 Theodore Jones University of Arizona