Aboveground Woody Biomass Product Validation Good Practices Protocol

Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS)

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Abstract: This document reflects the view of the biomass focus area within the CEOS WGCV Land Product Validation sub-group. This focus area provides the community involved in the production and validation of satellitebased woody aboveground biomass products with a forum for documenting accepted good practices in an open and transparent manner, that is scientifically defensible. This ?title? document (V1.0) has undergone review by remote sensing experts from across the globe. This represents the current state of knowledge for satellite biomass remote sensing and includes a summary of current knowledge and data gaps toward operational validation of products at a global scale. We note that currently (March, 2021), no globally representative, systematically collected reference system for biomass product validation is available. We make recommendations for new data collections specifically designed for this purpose, but acknowledge that these recommendations and the authorship for this document are biased toward tropical moist forests. While we attempt to make recommendations that are applicable to all ecosystems, we note that forest ecosystems are dynamic and structurally complex, and a single set of recommendations will not apply to all ecosystems. Additionally, existing reference datasets, such as National Forest Inventories (NFIs), provide critical data addressing many needs beyond the validation of biomass products. While our recommendations focus on ideal datasets for validation and inter-comparison at the plot and pixel scale, we stress that our recommendations may be impractical in some cases, and should not replace, but complement, existing datasets that are maintained by in-country organizations, such as NFIs.