The Forest Carbon Monitoring (FCM) project has been designing and implementing a versatile set of tools for EO-based forest structure and biomass monitoring. In the anticipation of the imminent publication of the FCM tools, we are happy to make available the FCM Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD). This document provides the scientific basis for the tools implemented in the project.
In addition to the description of the algorithms, also the uncertainty estimation methods and the main datasets used during the project are described. For each tool, examples of the performance in the FCM use case demonstrations have been reported to provide an indication of the level of expected uncertainty of the output products.
The document contains five main sections:
- FCM concept and tools, which provides an overview of the Forest Carbon Monitoring concept and available tools.
- Primary datasets, which describes the primary datasets that were used in the development and demonstration of the tools.
- Statistical approaches, which describes the statistical approaches used in the evaluation of the uncertainty and utilisation of the output products.
- Algorithm descriptions, which provides descriptions of the algorithms and approaches underlying the FCM tools, including the levels of uncertainty reached in the use case demonstrations.
- Conclusion, which wraps up the main message of the ATBD document and provides users with advice on how to select tools for their use case.
Information on how to access the tools will be provided on the 'Toolset'-page of the website in the coming weeks, as soon as all of the tools have been made available.