Joanna Carver, reporter
(Image: Carnegie Airborne Observatory)
No, this isn't a candy forest. This is the Peruvian Amazon as seen by the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO), an instrument-laden aircaft that is mapping tropical ecology in unprecedented detail.
The plane carries the Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System, or AToMS, which uses an imaging spectrometer that engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, helped to build. It detects chemical signals and recognises the signatures of plant species, while a laser-ranging system draws up a 3D model of the landscape below. The CAO can reach every tropical region on the planet and scan 50,000 hectares a day.
"It's like taking an X-ray of an entire landscape, plant by plant, and each tiny hill," said Greg Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science. "We can see how just a 1- or 2-foot change in ground elevation can create a new habitat for rainforest species, with measurable effects on the rainforest biomass. AToMS consistently reveals something we didn't know, and often many things we had never considered."
The new technology can measure ecosystem chemistry, biomass and biodiversity - information that can be used to help mitigate climate change, conserve forests and manage ecosystem. AToMs can even detect the water content of leaves, detecting which plants are under stress from drought, which may increase in the near future. Here, blue shows high nitrogen concentrations in canopies; purple is high nitrogen, water and cellulose; and red is high chlorophyll and photosynthetic pigments.
"Probably the most profound scientific advances revolve around directly measuring biodiversity in some of the most critically endangered regions of our planet," Asner said.
AToMS began work in June 2011, and the team presented their first results at the American Geophysical Union meetings in San Francisco last week.
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