CTrees

This week, #COP29 officially kicks off in Baku, Azerbaijan. CTrees CEO Sassan Saatchi will speak at several events focused on the Caspian Sea Basin, open data, innovations in emissions tracking, and more: ??Satellites, AI and More! Open Access Activity Data and Digital Tools to Help Countries and Other Stakeholders Meet Their ETF Goals (Wednesday, Nov. 13) ??Caspian Sea Basin Environmental Governance Regional and Policy Framework for Climate Action (Thursday, Nov. 16) ??Caspian Sea Basin: Assessing and Mitigating the Risks of Tipping Points (Thursday, Nov. 16) And on Friday, November 15, former Vice President Al Gore will present updated global emissions data from?Climate TRACE, a coalition of nonprofits supporting an open inventory of emissions from every sector. CTrees contributes all forestry and land use data to the inventory. Email [email protected] to schedule a meeting.

NEW DATA: Today,?CTrees?released global data on land carbon changes in 2023, revealing how and where climate change has intensified global forest loss. Published in an open data platform called?Jurisdictional MRV?(JMRV), the data from 2000 to 2023 includes forest area, carbon stocks, and emissions and removals from land use change activities for 263 countries and territories worldwide. JMRV is the only dataset that provides annual mapping of land carbon changes on a global scale. Key findings from the data update include: ? Emissions from deforestation declined by 15% in tropical regions from 2022 to 2023. Amazon Basin countries reduced deforestation emissions by 28% and Congo Basin countries by 18% during this period. ? However,?Indonesia’s deforestation emissions spiked by 37% in 2023, reversing declines since 2015. Deforestation in the tropics remains a major source of global emissions. ? In the Northern Hemisphere, 2023 marked yet another year of high emissions from fires and forest loss, with no significant emissions reductions in the land sector. Canada’s record-breaking forest fires in 2023 burned more than 15 million hectares, an area larger than England, and produced approximately 1.2 billion metric tons of CO?e emissions from loss of live biomass. ? The global land sink further weakened in 2023, driven by extensive forest fires and slowed forest recovery due to warming and drying conditions. Sassan Saatchi, CTrees’ co-founder and CEO, said: “Natural carbon sinks are vital to remove emissions from the atmosphere each year, but forests and other ecosystems on land are losing this crucial capacity due to both direct and indirect human pressures. Deforestation and degradation, as direct impacts show no boundaries, affecting tropical, temperate, and boreal forests alike. Rising temperature and frequent droughts intensify these impacts, driving large-scale fires and tree mortality, that further weaken the planet’s land carbon sink. While there are encouraging signs of progress, world leaders must prioritize robust policies and financial commitments to protect and restore forest and non-forest ecosystems.”

Last month, our head of marketing Daniel Melling travelled to Peru for the annual meeting of the Governors' Climate & Forests Task Force, a network of 43 states and provinces committed to advancing forest protection. In a blog post this week, Daniel shares his reflections from the meeting, whose agenda focused largely on the #NewForestEconomy: a plan to support rural economic development and reduce deforestation. As #COP29 opens in Baku amid frustrations with the slow progress of international cooperation, Daniel finds inspiration in the work of local leaders fostering sustainable industries that help reduce pressure on tropical forests. Photo below by José Francisco León.

Attending #VERGE24 this week? Join the Forest Carbon Monitoring Innovations session tomorrow morning, October 30, to hear from a panel of experts that includes CTrees CEO Sassan Saatchi alongside: ? Alessandro Baccini, Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer at Chloris Geospatial ? Eve Boyce-Ratliff, Director of Business Development at Upstream Tech ? Ross Bernet, Carbon Removal Program Manager at Microsoft ? Elias Ayrey (PhD), Chief Science Officer at Renoster (moderator) Their conversation will explore the latest advancements in forest carbon monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) solutions. Attendees will have an opportunity to hear directly from carbon buyers on how these data insights are informing their carbon strategies. It's a discussion that you don't want to miss!

New data from CTrees’ platform?REDD+AI shows that human activities have degraded an area of tropical forests equivalent to the size of California over the last six years. The open data platform highlights forest degradation on a global scale, revealing the extent to which road construction, logging, and forest fires have impacted tropical forests in recent years. Forest degradation, or activities that cause the loss of trees, carbon, and other important ecosystem services without the complete clearing of forests, has previously been difficult to detect with conventional satellite imagery. Utilizing advanced satellite imagery and AI, the new platform reveals that a combination of road construction, logging, and fire degraded an average of?6.9 million hectares, an area equivalent to the size of Ireland, per year globally from 2017 through 2023. Last year also saw the highest levels of forest degradation in the seven years studied, with nearly 8 million hectares degraded.

NEW DATA: CTrees is excited to announce the launch of REDD+AI, the first data platform to map forest degradation across tropical forests. This groundbreaking new system combines advanced satellite imagery with AI to pinpoint forest degradation across the tropics and attribute it to specific drivers: logging, fire, and road construction. REDD+AI detects change on a monthly to biannual basis in every 5-meter area of tropical forests worldwide, providing users with open access to detailed maps and statistics on global forest degradation. Data from the platform reveals that?logging, fire, and road construction degraded an average of more than 6.9 million hectares of tropical forest per year from 2017 to 2023. In the last six years, these human activities have degraded 41.6 million hectares of tropical forests, an area equivalent to the size of California. The platform draws attention to the vulnerability of tropical forests and sheds light on the previously hidden effects of logging and road construction. The data release comes as world leaders gather at #COP16 in Cali this week to discuss biodiversity protection, and will meet at #COP29 in Baku next month to address climate change. “Protecting tropical forests is essential for our response to climate change,” said?Sassan Saatchi, CTrees’ CEO and senior research scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech. “This is the first dataset of its kind to precisely reveal where and to what extent forest degradation, the second ‘D’ in REDD+, is occurring, enabling a more comprehensive strategy for emission reduction. Our new product gives every tropical forest government the data needed for accountability and action.” REDD+AI is based on images from the PlanetScope satellite constellation, provided by Planet Labs PBC and made available via NICFI - Norway's International Climate and Forest Initiative. The platform uses deep learning to automatically detect tree cover loss and degradation, achieving accuracy comparable to human interpretation. The process is based on peer-reviewed scientific methodologies developed by CTrees scientists Ricardo Dalagnol da Silva and Fabien H Wagner, during their postdoctoral research fellowships at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Explore the platform and learn more: https://ctrees.org/reddai

Headed to the Sustainable Commodities & Land Use Forum in Amsterdam next week? So is CTrees research & engagement specialist, Aijing Li. Reach out directly to Aijing if you'd like to connect or schedule a time to meet.

#LUCA IN ACTION: Nicaragua’s forests are at risk. The Environmental Performance Index, a metric developed by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, finds that the health of Nicaragua’s forests have declined by over 11% throughout the last decade. Recent reporting in Mongabay points to unlawful encroachment of cattle ranching, mining, and logging into the country’s protected forests. The impacts of these activities are particularly visible in Indio Maíz and Bosawás, two large biosphere reserves located on the eastern and western borders of the country. In both reserves, forest disturbance alerts in 2024 have already far surpassed that of 2023, according to data from the CTrees LUCA platform. In Bosawás, total disturbance alerts in the second quarter of 2024 reached 34,943 total hectares – a nearly 68% increase from the same timeframe in 2023. In Indio Maíz, the 1,323 hectares of disturbance alerts in April 2024 were roughly equal to total disturbance alerts for all of 2023. With its biweekly alerts, LUCA locates where and when forest disturbances take place in Nicaragua and beyond. LUCA allows users to visualize and quantify alerts in any administrative area or custom boundary. Based on ESA Sentinel-1 radar data, and backed by a peer-reviewed scientific methodology, the platform provides biweekly forest land use change alerts for all forest biomes. Development of LUCA is led by CTrees research scientist Adugna Mullissa, Ph.D.

CTrees’ Daniel Melling reports this week from Ucayali, Peru, where leaders of tropical forest states are gathering for the annual meeting of the Governors' Climate & Forests Task Force, a coalition of states covering 1/3 of global tropical forests. CTrees’ partnership with the GCF Task Force and its member states includes data exchange and engagement for use of our satellite data tools, which measure carbon and activity in forests at relevant scales for decision making. Subnational governments like Ucayali in Peru, Pará in Brazil, and Santa Cruz in Bolivia, all represented here alongside indigenous peoples and task force partners, are key to implementing policies and experimenting with new approaches. We look forward to building on our engagement with the task force states this week, and supporting their efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation while building sustainable rural economies.

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us at our #ClimateWeekNYC fireside chat, “A Photographic Journey Through Forestry Carbon Projects” last week! seeing the real impact #CarbonDoneCorrectly can have on the planet and its people left us feeling inspired, motivated, and ready keep taking real #climateaction. A special shout out to our panel, including our own Dee MacLeod Lawrence and Jodi Manning, as well as CTrees' Sassan Saatchi and Bronson Griscom from Conservation International — your insight, stories, and real-world experience on the front lines of the fight against rising emissions truly made this event a memorable one.