Harvard Data Science Initiative, 114 Western Avenue, 3rd Floor, Allston, MA 02134
Measuring global trees and climate stocks with remote sensing data and machine learning models
We combined commercial satellite data, machine learning, high performance computing, and allometric field measurements to estimate carbon content of ten billion semi-arid trees with an uncertainty of ±20% over an area the size of Alaska and the 48 continental states combined. Our results disagreed with all previous satellite studies and numerical simulation model results. Our voluminous output data required the development of a viewer for others to use our results and for verification of our tree mapping. Our results appeared in the March 2, 2023 issue of Nature.
Professor Chris Golden will moderate Q&A after Jim’s talk.
Compton J. Tucker, received his B.S. degree in biological science in 1969 from Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. After working for banks in Denver and in Albuquerque, he returned to Colorado State University for graduate school and received his M.S in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1975, both from the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory in the College of Forestry. In 1975, he came to NASA/Goddard as a post-doctoral fellow and in 1977 became an employee of NASA. Tucker has used satellite data to study the Earth for famine early warning, deforestation, ecologically-coupled diseases, terrestrial primary production, glacier extent, and carbon in individual trees. From 2003-2012 he took part in NASA’s Space Archaeology Program, assisting archaeologists mapping ancient sites at Troy, in the Granicus River Valley, and at Gordian, all in Turkey.
He has authored or coauthored more than 200 journal articles, has a Web of Science “H“ index of 104, is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, and is a consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He is a Fellow of the AGU & the AAAS and has been awarded several medals and honors, including NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, the National Air and Space Museum Trophy, the Henry Shaw Medal from the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Vega Medal from the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography.