Context: The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to launch its ambitious Biomass Mission on April 29 from the ESA’s Korou spaceport in French Guiana.
Relevance of the Topic: Prelims: Key facts about ESA’s Biomass Mission; Carbon Cycle.
ESA’s Biomass Mission
- The satellite will be placed in the sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of ~666 km. (it will always appear in the same position relative to the Sun).
- Objective: Map the world’s forests to provide the very first comprehensive measurements of forest biomass at a global scale. Create 3D images of forests — from the top of the forest canopy to the roots of its trees.
- Beyond forest monitoring, the mission will also observe the movement of ice sheets in Antarctica, and generate digital models of terrains covered by dense vegetation.
Working
- The mission will use a SAR (synthetic aperture radar) to map the Earth’s surface. The satellite is fitted with a massive 12-m antenna, and will be the first satellite in space to use a long-wave P-band SAR.
- This will help it penetrate dense forest canopies to assess how much carbon is stored on the floor and in the branches of the trees, and to assess how these levels are changing over time. Longer wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation penetrate matter more than shorter wavelengths.
Significance: Enhance understanding about the role of forest in the carbon cycle. Allow scientists to more accurately measure how the distribution of carbon in the planet is changing, as humans continue to cut down trees, and increase CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Carbon Cycle:
- Carbon cycle is the process that moves carbon between plants, animals, and microbes; minerals in the earth; and the atmosphere. All lifeforms on Earth, including the smallest microbes, are carbon-based. Earth does not gain or lose carbon. The element only moves between the atmosphere, living organisms, Earth’s crust and soil, and the oceans.
- Forests are an essential part of the carbon cycle. Forests store massive amounts of carbon (absorb around ~16 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year), and hold 861 gigatonnes of carbon in their soils and vegetation.
- Data on forest biomass (mass of organic matter in forests) is severely lacking on a global scale. This fundamentally limits our understanding of the state of the forests, and their impact on the carbon cycle (and climate). The Biomass mission aims to bridge this knowledge gap.
Note: According to a report by the World Resources Institute, in 2023, Earth lost 3.7 million hectares of tropical forests, equivalent to losing around ten football fields worth of forest land every minute. This forest loss produced roughly 6% of estimated global CO2 emissions in 2023.