Mapping Annual Aboveground Biomass and Uncertainty for Arctic and Boreal North America, 1984-2022

Research by Wanwan Liang¹, Jonathan Wang¹, Eric Bullock¹, Jiaming Lu¹, Kai-Ting Hu², Mark Friedl², Yingtong Zhang², Xiaoran Zhu², Olivier van Lier³, Piotr Tompalski³, James Randerson⁴, Douglas Morton⁵, Brendan Rogers⁶, Arden Burrell^6,7, Matthew Macander⁸, and Daryl Yang⁹

¹University of Utah, School of Biological Sciences; ²Boston University, Department of Earth and Environment; ³Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada; ⁴University of California, Irvine, Department of Earth System Science; ⁵NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; ⁶Woodwell Climate Research Center; ⁷University of Sydney; ⁸ABR Environmental Research & Services; ⁹Oak Ridge National Lab

The Arctic-boreal carbon cycle is being altered by climate change, rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and climate-induced changes in disturbance regimes. To characterize these changes, with funding from NASA, we developped high quality annual biomass maps for nearly four decades, and use our maps to improve understanding of how climate change is driving large-scale changes in the Arctic-boreal ecosystems and to facilate projection of future changes.

The development of our annual biomass maps totally relied on CHPC system, including storing about 150 TB of predictors on HPC, calibrating prediction models, and deriving biomass and uncertainty maps by using owner nodes of our group and hundreds of owner-guest nodes for 1.5 months.

Attribution: This content was provided by the researchers and edited for style by staff at the CHPC.