Large-scale forest restoration is a challenge of precision. To transform large stretches of degraded land into restored ecosystems, one needs to know exactly where to plant, how to plant, and what to track. At Biomas, this process requires support from the Geospatial Sciences, a transversal area that combines innovative technology and consistent methods in order to assure that each project is viable, efficient, and, most importantly, reliable.
Marcelo Matsumoto, our Geospatial Sciences manager, explains how knowledge of the territory and data integration guarantee technical rigor, scale, and transparency at each phase of the project, spanning from identifying the best areas for restoration to long-term carbon tracking.
Identifying restoration territories begins with a rigorous data analysis process to guarantee the feasibility and safety of the projects.
As we showed in the article, “How forests are reborn: the Behind the Scenes of ecological restoration,” a project’s success begins well before the first seedling is planted. The first step is the research about compatible areas for large-scale restoration, which we call land origination.
In this search, Geospatial Sciences play an essential role: through the overlaying of layers of precise geographical data, our team can identify strategic areas in forest biomes, such as the Atlantic Forest and the Amazon. Complex variables are analyzed at the national scale to filter lands that present:
- Strict eligibility: Areas without deforestation in the last 10 years that are not prone to flooding, excessively steep or rocky, and do not present other characteristics that hinder restoration efforts.
- Economic Feasibility: Analysis of land prices and infrastructure logistics.
- Legal Safety: Verification of land ownership overlaps and restrictions, such as mining areas.
This analysis functions as a risk analysis filter, making the field visits more effective, focused on confirming potential alerts that are already digitally mapped. “Geospatial Sciences help us transform tools like satellite and drone imagery into strategic intelligence tools,” says Matsumoto.
Detailed mapping guarantees operational efficiency and precise decision making in the day-to-day operations
Once the area is defined, the geospatial intelligence focuses on the details of the land. During this phase, declivity and topography mapping are crucial for deciding which restoration techniques will be used.
In really steep areas, for example, the mapping defines if planting will be manual or if special machinery is required, like crawler tractors instead of wheeled ones. At Project Muçununga, which is restoring more than 1,200 hectares of Atlantic Forest in southern Bahia, this technical support allowed for 94% of the area to be mechanized, an efficiency milestone for rugged terrains.
Integrating different tracking scales assures precision in the carbon capture data
For projects focused on the carbon market, reliability also depends on accurately calculating the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere. To obtain this information, the Geospatial Sciences division monitors biomass, which means it measures the “physical body” of the trees, which are the trunk, branches, and leaves.
Since the trees capture carbon from the air to grow in size, the more wood they produce, the more carbon they absorb and “store.” At Biomas, we track this growth by integrating three different types of data, which Matsumoto calls the “credibility triad”:
- Forest inventory: Our team goes to the field and measures the diameter and height of the trees in specific sectors, which function as samples of the different restored areas as a whole.
- Drones fly above the area and capture high resolution images, allowing for visibility of tree canopy details that the satellite imagines don’t detect.
- Satellite imagery provides a macro view. We use the data that our teams and drones collect to “teach” the satellite imagery to calculate the carbon stock of the entire area.
To Matsumoto, the key lies in “pixel translation”: each point in the satellite images contains a physical response that our team correlates to real measurements from the field. “We translate what is observed on the ground in order to project results onto unsampled areas, ensuring a robust and auditable carbon estimate,” he explains.
Geospatial Technology also allows us to quantify the restoration benefits for the recuperation of the ecosystem services
Biomas’ high integrity restoration approach seeks to identify benefits that go beyond carbon removal, such as the recovery of ecosystem services. The Geospatial Sciences help us measure these impacts from different angles, some of which are:
- Connectivity (Ecological corridors): Through landscape analysis, our team identifies the areas where restoration acts as “stepping stones,” facilitating wildlife and fauna movement between forest fragments. At Project Muçununga, this analysis yielded precise numerical indicators about improved landscape connectivity.
- Water resources: The use of hydrological models allows our teams to estimate how the new forest reduces sediment runoff into rivers, lowering water turbidity and improving water quality and aquifer recharge.
Transparency and digital auditability are the pillars for restoration credibility in the global market
Technological evolution is moving towards automation and the use of artificial intelligence to integrate data, overcoming complex challenges such as persistent cloud cover in tropical regions. For Biomas, these advancements enhance the capacity for monitoring, tracking, and independent verification of projects.
The digital delineation of our project areas allow us to provision maps and georeferenced data on platforms of certifying bodies that are responsible for auditing the projects and validating the carbon credits that are generated.
This process also makes it possible for investors, buyers, and other market participants to verify the actual progress of the restored areas remotely, transparently, and independently.
For Matsumoto, this tracking and continuous verification capability is one of the factors that uphold the credibility of large-scale restoration. “In our market, credibility is fundamental. That is why we safeguard the quality of the information to ensure that the carbon generated is reflective of the reality on the ground, with the robustness required for the future of restoration,” he states.”