The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) has announced a $12 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in support of GEO-TREES, a project that aims to provide a free, definitive standard for the quantification of forest carbon around the world in real time.

With a goal to provide a single standard through which countries, companies, and landowners will be able to easily and accurately estimate carbon storage—and change in carbon storage—for any forest on the planet, GEO-TREES utilizes ground-based measurement of trees, soil carbon sampling, and ground- and air-based laser scans to collect real-time estimates of carbon storage. All data will be made freely available online, and estimates can be used to calibrate satellite measurements and actionable valuation of forest carbon sequestration services. The Moore Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund have each awarded $12 million for the project.

“We have been measuring global temperatures since 1880; the hottest year ever was last year, and the hottest 10 years on record were all in the past 19,” said STRI director Joshua Tewksbury. “We’ve only had a taste of the fast-approaching climate change chaos, and every ton of carbon we take out of the atmosphere today helps reduce that chaos going forward. Right now, growing trees is the only way to lock up carbon at scale, and because other methods of removing carbon are still too expensive, untested, or have yet to scale, growing trees accounts for nearly all current carbon removal efforts. This is why we desperately need a trustworthy way to measure forest carbon.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/iiievgeniy)