BIOMASS Launched! What ESA's New Mission Means for Carbon Projects
Unprecedented forest insights
Science & Tech
Project Development
Carbon Credits
Apr 29, 2025
Mark Hennen
As the world steps up its efforts to tackle climate change, confidence in nature-based carbon solutions has never been more important. At Treeconomy, we’ve built cutting-edge tools that harness the unique capabilities of satellite and drone technologies to deliver high-integrity carbon project monitoring. And today, a new chapter begins.
The European Space Agency (ESA) BIOMASS mission, launched this morning from Kourou in French Guiana, marks a watershed moment for global forest carbon monitoring. Equipped with the world’s first P-band radar satellite - complete with its distinctive umbrella-like antenna - the mission promises to deliver an unprecedented planet-wide view of forest carbon stocks and how they’re changing over time.
Source: ESA Biomass
In this blog, we take a look at what BIOMASS means for the future of carbon market integrity, and how it will complement and enhance the services we proudly offer today.
Why Monitor Forest Biomass?
Forests are our climate allies, capturing and storing vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere. They underpin nature-based climate solutions, but to manage, protect, and restore these carbon stores effectively, we need accurate, ongoing measurements of how much carbon they hold — and how that’s changing.
These measurements directly impact the credibility and value of offset projects. Both voluntary and compliance carbon markets rely on trustworthy data to issue, verify, and track carbon credits, ensuring the claimed climate benefits are real and measurable.
Why this matters for carbon markets:
- Credit issuance depends on it. You can’t issue carbon credits without knowing how much carbon has been added or preserved in a project area.
- Project integrity relies on transparent, accurate data. Buyers, auditors, and regulators need confidence that claimed emissions reductions are genuine.
- Continuous monitoring is essential. Carbon stocks can quickly drop if forests are degraded or cleared — ongoing tracking ensures credits remain valid and reflect real-world conditions.
- It enables markets to scale responsibly. As demand for nature-based credits grows, scalable, reliable data is needed to support new projects, especially in remote, data-poor regions.
Tropical Forests: A Massive Opportunity, Significant Challenges
Tropical forests are among the planet’s most powerful carbon sinks. Although they cover just 7% of Earth’s surface, they hold around one-third of all terrestrial carbon [1]. Most of this is locked in their above-ground biomass (AGB) — the living vegetation above the soil (trees, branches, and leaves).
Source: ESA Biomass
This biomass absorbs an estimated 1.1–1.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ annually [2], equivalent to ~3% of global CO₂ emissions, or the entire aviation sector’s annual emissions [3]. But when forests are logged, degraded, or burned, that carbon is released, contributing up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions [4].
Yet, accurately measuring AGB in tropical forests is notoriously difficult. Traditional field surveys are labour-intensive, time-consuming, and often impractical in remote, densely forested, or politically unstable areas. While optical satellite imagery has transformed large-scale monitoring, it faces serious limitations:
- Canopy saturation: Dense tropical canopies quickly reach a reflectance ceiling, making it difficult to distinguish between high and very high biomass.
- Persistent cloud cover: The tropics are frequently cloudy, limiting the number of usable satellite images and creating seasonal or annual gaps in monitoring.
- 2D data for a 3D problem: Optical sensors capture surface reflectance but can’t see through the canopy to measure the height, density, and structure of trees — critical factors for accurate biomass estimation.
Peering Through the Clouds
The Biomass mission is ESA’s latest Earth Explorer flagship, designed to deliver the world’s first consistent, planet-wide measurements of forest above-ground biomass (AGB). Using pioneering P-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), BIOMASS will generate reliable data in all climates, including persistently cloud-covered and remote tropical regions.
Source: Airbus
Unlike optical sensors, which passively detect reflected sunlight, P-band radar actively emits microwave pulses and measures how they bounce back from forest structures. With a much longer wavelength than visible light, P-band SAR offers several key advantages:
- Penetrates dense canopies: P-band waves travel deeper into the canopy than traditional SAR satellites, interacting with trunks and branches — the parts of a forest where most carbon is stored.
- Operates through clouds and darkness: Radar isn’t limited by daylight or clear skies, providing consistent, year-round monitoring.
- Captures forest structure: By analysing how radar signals scatter within the forest volume, scientists can estimate tree height, canopy density, and biomass.
A New Era for Biomass Monitoring
Source: ESA Biomass
Over its five-and-a-half-year mission, ESA’s Biomass satellite will dramatically enhance our understanding of the world’s forests and their carbon stores.
The mission will begin with an 18-month tomographic phase, using a technique similar to a CT scan to collect multiple radar images from different angles. This will build a detailed three-dimensional model — or ‘structural twin’ — of global forests, delivering a high-resolution, planet-wide baseline of AGB at a 200-metre spatial resolution, with vertical detail of 15–20 metres.
During its remaining time in orbit, the satellite will focus on monitoring changes in biomass. In this interferometric phase, BIOMASS will use polarimetric interferometry (Pol-InSAR) to track canopy height and detect structural changes. ESA will release global maps of AGB and canopy height every six months, offering a reliable, consistent data source for ongoing monitoring.
What This Means for Carbon Markets
This mission has the potential to be a game-changing moment for the voluntary carbon market. With enhanced coverage — especially in hard-to-reach, cloud-covered, and previously data-scarce regions — ESA BIOMASS will provide Treeconomy and our partners an unprecedented view of the world’s carbon-rich forests. For the first time, we’ll have a consistent, global baseline of above-ground biomass, delivering the vital evidence needed to underpin carbon credit claims and verify real-world climate impact.
With these insights, we can work with project developers on the ground to track degradation, measure restoration success, and respond more quickly to emerging risks such as drought, fire, and illegal land use. It’s a powerful new tool for strengthening credit integrity, building market trust, and supporting responsible growth as demand for nature-based solutions continues to rise.
At Treeconomy, we’re ready to embrace this next chapter — integrating BIOMASS’s groundbreaking data with our existing advanced satellite and drone monitoring services, to deliver even greater transparency, precision, and value for projects worldwide.
References
- Pan et al. (2011), Science, “A Large and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World’s Forests” https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1201609
- Our World in Data https://ourworldindata.org/global-aviation-emissions?utm_source
- Harris et al. (2021), Nature Climate Change, “Global maps of twenty-first century forest carbon fluxes” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00976-6
Friedlingstein et al. (2023), Global Carbon Budget 2023 https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/5301/2023/
