National Biomass Project in Congo complete: LiDAR to become Open Data?

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

apparently the national LiDAR project for biomass assessment in the Congo that was managed by WWF Germany and the Ministry of Environment of the DRC has been completed [1]. "In total, the flight campaign covered 216 sites and over 430,000 ha. All available plot data were compiled and processed to develop a LiDAR biomass model, which was then extrapolated to national scale by satellite imagery, including optical Landsat 8 and active radar data." Congratulations to all involved!

The exciting thing is that the raw LiDAR data is supposed to become *open data* now - at least that is what the German WWF Web site states [2] that is managing the project and this is what I was told by different WWF staff on two different occasions. 

This is great news because it is very hard to get such data. Previous (and non-public) funded research efforts on such a scale do not provide open access to their data for other scientist to experiment with or to replicate their results. But this entire effort was paid for by German taxpayers via a grant of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMU) via an International Climate Initiative (IKI) project of 6,336,268 Euros [3], so it would be reasonable to expect access to the data being made open. 

I am not able to find the LiDAR online yet. Does anyone know when it will be made available? It's my understanding that Southern Mapping was collecting the LiDAR and that Prof. Sassan Saatchi did the processing of the LiDAR but I would assume that either WWF Germany or the Ministry of Environment of the DRC would be those responsible for the distribution. I have found a few files [4] including a Canopy Height Models that was derived from the data [5] as well as an polygon layer of what seems to contain the outline of the LiDAR flight lines [6]. Does anyone know where and when the LiDAR will go online?

Regards,

Martin @rapidlasso

[1] http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?298971%2FWWF-DRC-national-biomass-map

[2] http://www.wwf.de/themen-projekte/waelder/wald-und-klima/modellprojekt-kohlenstoffkarte/qa-carbon-map-and-model-project/

[3] http://www.international-climate-initiative.com/en/projects/projects/details/development-of-a-carbon-storage-map-and-carbon-payment-model-regions-for-the-dr-congo-forest-belt-66/

[4] http://www.arcgis.com/home/search.html?t=content&q=tags:CO2M&M

[5] http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?useExisting=1&layers=03190f65d977454fa13d9336bf9915c0

[6] http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=9a5785f170e847df958489bf88d67dc9#visualize

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

As far as I know, the national LiDAR project for biomass assessment in the Congo has long be completed. The data - paid for by German taxpayers - was supposed to become open data as I had been told independently by two members of WWF staff and as I would expect it for any International Climate Initiative (IKI) project paid for with the public funds via a grant of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMU). 

Last I heard was that the data has been processed by Prof. Sassan Saatchi of UCLA/JPL but I am no able to find the open LiDAR for download. Does anyone know more? Maybe OpenTopography could host the data if it is just a data management and distribution problem.

Regards from Costa Rica,

Martin