The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
Thanks to their ability to absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forests have long been recognised as a key tool in the fight against climate change. New research, however, based on data from ESA’s SMOS L-band satellite mission has found that, surprisingly, young trees are champions at carbon capture.
Recent technical advances that remove interference and data artifacts have made it possible to obtain sufficiently robust measurements of L-band microwave vegetation optical depth (L-VOD) to assess live woody vegetative biomass and diagnose global changes in terrestrial carbon stocks.
The image shows biomass change between 2010 and 2019 based on L-VOD data from SMOS.
Gains in carbon-rich biomass come largely from boreal and temperate forests, with tropical forests adding only small increases in carbon – the result of deforestation and agricultural disturbances. Surprisingly, the research found that young and middle-aged forests – comprising trees between 50 to 140 years of age – played a dominant role absorbing atmospheric carbon and accumulating biomass. Forests 140 years old and above were approximately carbon neutral, which is the opposite of vegetation model predictions.
Read full story: Younger trees champion carbon capture