Adam Voiland

European Beech
Photo: Forestryimages.org/University of West Hungary/Norbert Frank

 Although there are other local-and regional-scale forest canopy maps, the new map is the first that spans the entire globe based on one uniform method.

The work - based on data collected by NASA's ICESat, Terra, and Aqua satellites - should help scientists build an inventory of how much carbon the world’s forests store and how fast that carbon cycles through ecosystems and back into the atmosphere. Michael Lefsky of the Colorado State University described his results in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.