Remote Sensing for Forest Carbon
Last updated
Last updated
Remote sensing combines various technologies that aid in the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of carbon offsets. Technologies include and are not limited to geospatial monitoring, stereo satellite imaging, P-band radar, hyperspectral imagery, and single photon LiDAR. Collectively these technologies aim to serve standard criteria by revealing: additionality, baseline, leakage, verification, and permanence, all of which function as a framework for assessing the offsets of forest carbon projects to evaluate quality, integrity, and impact.
According to Renoster's Mercury Rubric, the following are the five main principles that determine a score for forest carbon projects, every principle has subcomponents that are either graded on a "good/medium/fail" scale or "pass/fail", or "yes/no", or with a numeric figure.
The grades of all five principles and their subcomponents determine the project’s score. The score is an assessment of the value of each tonne of carbon.
The project score is assessed in two ways. First, any failing criteria above immediately results in a score of 0.0, because it can be assumed that credits from this project are at risk of being not legitimate, or in severe danger of reversal. Second, a project’s score is equal to the following:
Baseline Ratio (BR, Section 2.2) = Standard baseline outcome / Project baseline outcome
Ti-s = Time window between the start date and last issuance
Tp-i = Time window between the last issuance and present
Credits that should have been issued (Csi) = BR * Credits Issued Ti-s - (Deforestation Observed Ti-s - Deforestation Accounted For Ti-s)
The Ratio of Credits Properly Issued (Cr) = Csi / Credits issued Ti-s The proportion baseline deforestation since last issuance = (Baseline forecast Tp-i - (Baseline Deforestation Observed Tp-i - Deforestation Anticipated For Tp-i)) / Baseline forecast Tp-i
The Proportion of New Credits Deserved (Cd) = The proportion of baseline deforestation since the last issuance * BR
Project Score =Time weighted average of {Cr Ti-s, Cd Tp-i}
A score of 1.0 equals one tonne of genuine carbon removals. Scores above 1.0 indicate that the project may be overly cautious, and should perhaps be issued with more credits. Scores below 1.0 indicate that the project has potentially been issued with too many credits. Carbovalent aims to onboard credits with a score greater than 1.0 to avoid the potential of over-issuance. By following this assessment we can ensure those relying on carbon credits as part of their sustainability strategy are protected from unreliable credits which have disastrous impacts on climate change.
