Reconstructing Global Daily CO2 Emissions via Machine Learning

High temporal resolution CO2 emission data are crucial for understanding the drivers of emission changes, however, current emission dataset is only available on a yearly basis. Here, we extended a global daily CO2 emissions dataset backwards in time to 1970 using machine learning algorithm, which was trained to predict historical daily emissions on national scales based on relationships between daily emission variations and predictors established for the period since 2019. Variation in daily CO2 emissions far exceeded the smoothed seasonal variations. For example, the range of daily CO2 emissions equivalent to 31% of the year average daily emissions in China and 46% of that in India in 2022, respectively. We identified the critical emission-climate temperature (Tc) is 16.5 degree celsius for global average (18.7 degree celsius for China, 14.9 degree celsius for U.S., and 18.4 degree celsius for Japan), in which negative correlation observed between daily CO2 emission and ambient temperature below Tc and a positive correlation above it, demonstrating increased emissions associated with higher ambient temperature. The long-term time series spanning over fifty years of global daily CO2 emissions reveals an increasing trend in emissions due to extreme temperature events, driven by the rising frequency of these occurrences. This work suggests that, due to climate change, greater efforts may be needed to reduce CO2 emissions.

Estimating Canopy Height at Scale

We propose a framework for global-scale canopy height estimation based on satellite data. Our model leverages advanced data preprocessing techniques, resorts to a novel loss function designed to counter geolocation inaccuracies inherent in the ground-truth height measurements, and employs data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to effectively filter out erroneous labels in mountainous regions, enhancing the reliability of our predictions in those areas. A comparison between predictions and ground-truth labels yields an MAE / RMSE of 2.43 / 4.73 (meters) overall and 4.45 / 6.72 (meters) for trees taller than five meters, which depicts a substantial improvement compared to existing global-scale maps. The resulting height map as well as the underlying framework will facilitate and enhance ecological analyses at a global scale, including, but not limited to, large-scale forest and biomass monitoring.

Get Your Embedding Space in Order: Domain-Adaptive Regression for Forest Monitoring

Image-level regression is an important task in Earth observation, where visual domain and label shifts are a core challenge hampering generalization. However, cross-domain regression with remote sensing data remains understudied due to the absence of suited datasets. We introduce a new dataset with aerial and satellite imagery in five countries with three forest-related regression tasks. To match real-world applicative interests, we compare methods through a restrictive setup where no prior on the target domain is available during training, and models are adapted with limited information during testing. Building on the assumption that ordered relationships generalize better, we propose manifold diffusion for regression as a strong baseline for transduction in low-data regimes. Our comparison highlights the comparative advantages of inductive and transductive methods in cross-domain regression.

Vision Transformers, a new approach for high-resolution and large-scale mapping of canopy heights

Accurate and timely monitoring of forest canopy heights is critical for assessing forest dynamics, biodiversity, carbon sequestration as well as forest degradation and deforestation. Recent advances in deep learning techniques, coupled with the vast amount of spaceborne remote sensing data offer an unprecedented opportunity to map canopy height at high spatial and temporal resolutions. Current techniques for wall-to-wall canopy height mapping correlate remotely sensed 2D information from optical and radar sensors to the vertical structure of trees using LiDAR measurements. While studies using deep learning algorithms have shown promising performances for the accurate mapping of canopy heights, they have limitations due to the type of architectures and loss functions employed. Moreover, mapping canopy heights over tropical forests remains poorly studied, and the accurate height estimation of tall canopies is a challenge due to signal saturation from optical and radar sensors, persistent cloud covers and sometimes the limited penetration capabilities of LiDARs. Here, we map heights at 10 m resolution across the diverse landscape of Ghana with a new vision transformer (ViT) model optimized concurrently with a classification (discrete) and a regression (continuous) loss function. This model achieves better accuracy than previously used convolutional based approaches (ConvNets) optimized with only a continuous loss function. The ViT model results show that our proposed discrete/continuous loss significantly increases the sensitivity for very tall trees (i.e., > 35m), for which other approaches show saturation effects. The height maps generated by the ViT also have better ground sampling distance and better sensitivity to sparse vegetation in comparison to a convolutional model. Our ViT model has a RMSE of 3.12m in comparison to a reference dataset while the ConvNet model has a RMSE of 4.3m.

High-resolution canopy height map in the Landes forest based on GEDI, Sentinel-1, and Sentinel-2 data with a deep learning approach

In intensively managed forests in Europe, where forests are divided into stands of small size and may show heterogeneity within stands, a high spatial resolution (10 - 20 meters) is arguably needed to capture the differences in canopy height. In this work, we developed a deep learning model based on multi-stream remote sensing measurements to create a high-resolution canopy height map over the "Landes de Gascogne" forest in France, a large maritime pine plantation of 13,000 km$^2$ with flat terrain and intensive management. This area is characterized by even-aged and mono-specific stands, of a typical length of a few hundred meters, harvested every 35 to 50 years. Our deep learning U-Net model uses multi-band images from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 with composite time averages as input to predict tree height derived from GEDI waveforms. The evaluation is performed with external validation data from forest inventory plots and a stereo 3D reconstruction model based on Skysat imagery available at specific locations. We trained seven different U-net models based on a combination of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 bands to evaluate the importance of each instrument in the dominant height retrieval. The model outputs allow us to generate a 10 m resolution canopy height map of the whole "Landes de Gascogne" forest area for 2020 with a mean absolute error of 2.02 m on the Test dataset. The best predictions were obtained using all available satellite layers from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 but using only one satellite source also provided good predictions. For all validation datasets in coniferous forests, our model showed better metrics than previous canopy height models available in the same region.