\tApplications<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t17\/11\/2025
\n\t\t\t\t389 views
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t18 likes<\/p>\n
For decades, the Amazon rainforest has quietly absorbed vast quantities of human-generated carbon dioxide, helping to slow the pace of climate change. Recent evidence, however, suggests that this vital natural buffer may be weakening \u2013 though uncertainties remain.<\/p>\n
To help close this critical knowledge gap, European and Brazilian researchers have gathered deep in the Amazon to carry out an ambitious European Space Agency-funded field campaign.<\/p>\n
The Committee on Earth Observing Satellites<\/a> has identified the Amazon region as a potential near-future tipping point \u2013 a \u2018point of no return\u2019 \u2013 for global greenhouse gas emissions, warning that parts of the rainforest may soon shift from absorbing carbon to becoming a net source of carbon.<\/p>\n Yet significant uncertainty still surrounds current greenhouse gas fluxes and how these could change in the future.<\/p>\n The ESA large-scale field campaign, called the Carbon Amazon Rainforest Activity aims to plug this knowledge gap.<\/p>\n \t\t\tCarbon Amazon Rainforest Activity The campaign involves researchers collecting a suite of measurements from the ground-based sensors, towers, drones, and even from a low-flying aircraft skimming the forest canopy \u2013 all to better understand how greenhouse gases move through this vital ecosystem.<\/p>\n By combining these measurements with a range of satellite data, the team will deliver a comprehensive set of multiscale measurements to strengthen understanding of greenhouse gas emission trends from natural sources.<\/p>\n This work represents a major contribution to the\u00a0global stocktake<\/a>\u00a0and to international efforts to limit warming in line with the\u00a0Paris Agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since September, European and Brazilian scientists \u2013 led by King\u2019s College London and the UK\u2019s National Centre for Earth Observation \u2013 have concentrated their efforts on a 100 km by 100 km area in western Par\u00e1 State, Brazil.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tStudy area in Par\u00e1 State, Brazil<\/a><\/p>\n It is feared that this zone, which includes undisturbed forest, farmland and degraded land, is already tipping from a carbon sink to a carbon source, making it an ideal testbed for understanding the impacts of deforestation, degradation and fire on the Amazon\u2019s ability to store and retain carbon.<\/p>\n To capture the full picture, researchers deployed an extensive array of ground-based sensors and towers, complementing the long-running Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment (LBA) in Amazonia, which is led by Brazil. Mobile instruments and drones have also been used to investigate fire behaviour and sample smoke emissions up close.<\/p>\n Luiz Arag\u00e3o, scientist at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and member of the scientific committee of LBA in the Tapajos Forest, said \u201cThis campaign is an opportunity for ESA to engage with LBA scientists and also provides new opportunities for LBA to expand and go beyond standard ecological measurements to include novel remote-sensing.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tInvestigating the Amazon\u2019s weakening carbon sink<\/a><\/p>\n Martin Wooster, from King\u2019s College London, said, \u201cThe in-situ network yields continuous and site-specific measurements. We are now able to measure many properties relating to land\u2013atmosphere exchanges of greenhouse gases, including rates of photosynthesis, and compare observations from undisturbed and degraded forest locations.<\/p>\n \u201cThis complements wider airborne \u2018snapshots\u2019, and the far broader-scale observations across the entire Amazon from satellite missions such as Copernicus\u00a0Sentinel-2<\/a>,\u00a0Sentinel-3<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sentinel-5P<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n But the campaign doesn\u2019t stop at ground level. A British Antarctic Survey Twin Otter research aircraft has completed multiple flights over the region, sampling atmospheric greenhouse gases and pollutants, and capturing how fires reshape the landscape from above.<\/p>\n ESA Campaign Coordinator, Dirk Schuettemeyer, highlighted, \u201cThe flights mark a significant milestone, as it\u2019s the first time Brazil has granted a foreign remote-sensing aircraft permission to operate in the Amazon since NASA\u2019s landmark\u00a0SCAR-B<\/a>\u00a0campaign in the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n \u201cThis new activity is a tangible outcome of ongoing cooperation between ESA, Brazil\u2019s National Institute for Space Research and the Brazilian Space Agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n