title: These are the days of lasers in the jungle.
abstract: For tropical forest carbon to be commoditized, a consistent, globally verifiable system for reporting and monitoring carbon stocks and emissions must be achieved. We call for a global airborne LiDAR campaign that will measure the 3-D structure of each hectare of forested (and formerly forested) land in the tropics. We believe such a database could be assembled for only 5% of funding already pledged to offset tropical forest carbon emissions.
authors.affiliation: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1300 New York Ave NW, Washington 20001, DC, USA.
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mascaro
authors.affiliation: Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, 260 Panama St., Stanford 94305, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Gregory P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Asner
authors.affiliation: Forest Global Earth Observatory, Center for Tropical Forest Science, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Washington 20013, DC, USA.
authors.forename: Stuart
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Davies
authors.affiliation: Conservation X Labs, 2380 Champlain St. NW #203, Washington 20009, DC, USA.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dehgan
authors.affiliation: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena 91109, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Sassan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Saatchi