REMOTE SENSING TECHNOLOGY detects and monitors the physical characteristics of an area by gauging reflected and emitted radiation energy from a distance.
More recently the technology came to be used in various aspects of climate change – from predicting the weather, analysing climate pollutants to forest management, says Ts. Dr Wan Shafrina Wan Mohd Jaafar, a research fellow and senior lecturer from Climate Change Institute, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).
“Currently, I am studying the level of carbon stock and assessing forest landscape restoration function in increasing carbon stocks in the Danum Valley Conservation Area near Lahad Datu in Sabah using Light Detection Ranging (LiDAR).
“This region is home to a 130-million-year-old ancient rainforest. It has the world’s most complex ecosystem and is renowned for its incredible biodiversity,” added Shafrina.[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”block” ihc_mb_who=”unreg” ihc_mb_template=”3″ ]
According to her more and more researchers globally are showing a keen interest in carbon capture – since the increase in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to global warming.
“The ocean, soil, and forests are the world’s largest carbon sink. They are natural repositories that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
“Trees are known as ‘carbon sinks’ because of their ability to store carbon. This is done through a process called photosynthesis. Trees absorb carbon dioxide through their leaves and turn them into sugars needed for them to grow and a quarter of the human population globally still depend on the forest for their livelihood.”
According to Shafrina, “while satellites, drones, and radars are among the remote sensing tools that have vast applications in studying the earth but LiDAR is the most suitable tool to study rainforest dynamics.
“It is a type of active remote sensing tool that is fully functional at any time of day or night. It helps us to understand complex forest structures and generates accurate forest inventory.
“In the case of the Danum Valley, we are currently mapping the forest by measuring the vertical structure of the canopy using LiDAR.
She said there are five main areas in the forests where carbon pools occur. These carbon pools are above-ground biomass, below-ground biomass, deadwood, litter, and soils.
She said standing trees have the highest carbon densities followed by the soil and the forest floor in a forest ecosystem. The data obtained from remote sensing technology will be modelled using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to develop a carbon model. The model can be used to extract carbon readings from a regional to global scale and calculate the forest biomass.
She said biomass density is a useful variable to assess changes in forest structure when wildfire or climate change occurs. From the biomass density, estimates of carbon dioxide amount can be calculated and reduced by regrowing forests.
Shafrina said the conventional way of measuring biomass over large areas requires massive ground-based measurement of inventory plots, which is very labour intensive.
“The researcher needs to calculate tree height, diameter at breast height (DBH), collect species information and crown measurement. By using LiDAR we only need small samples set of tree data (as small as 0.5 ha) to be validated and it can be modelled to represent a wider landscape scale.”
On another note, Shafrina hopes to encourage more graduates to walk this career path.
“After completing my Bachelor’s Degree in remote sensing at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), I secured a job as an engineer and stayed in the industry for almost six years. As my true passion is to study the nature of remote sensing, I decided to look for PhD opportunities. I received a scholarship from MARA to chase my dream at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. My interest in forestry management was kindled during my PhD studies as I identified research gaps in remote sensing applications for Malaysian forestry.
“It is vital to keep track of forest inventory because better management of existing forests would improve forest growth and increase carbon storage,” she added.
“I am one of the few women working in the remote sensing forestry field as well as one of the few using the LiDAR for forestry applications in Malaysia.[/ihc-hide-content]
