Welcome to TERN Australia’s 2024 mid-winter newsletter in which we are excited to share with you our strategic plan brochure. This document provides the essential information from TERN’s 2023-28 strategic plan. Both the brochure and longer form of the plan are downloadable from the TERN website.
Earlier this year I attended a GEO-TREES project meeting in Washington DC where representatives from 26 countries discussed how they will build the world’s first ground-based global forest biomass reference system, assisting governments, policymakers, communities and enterprises to understand where forest carbon is and how it is changing. Over time, GEO-TREES sites will contribute to validation of Earth Observation data on above ground biomass.
For the GEO-TREES project, the TERN Australia site closest to having the optimal data coverage from a forest plot inventory (10 hectares with plots of at least 1 hectare each), Airborne Laser Scanning data (ALS of at least 1000 hectares of forest), and Terrestrial Laser Scanning data (TLS of at least 3 hectares of forest), is the Robson Creek Rainforest SuperSite near Atherton in Far North Queensland. All the data have either already been collected or the missing measures are being completed this year and will be openly available through the TERN Data Discovery Portal.
I was able to see first-hand last week how well we are progressing towards the GEO-TREES specifications when I caught up with TERN colleagues from James Cook University who run the Robson Creek site and were overseeing the latest inventory of trees in the forest plots at Robson Creek. Also onsite was a University of Ghent team, who were completing the required 3 ha TLS measures. Accompanying me for the day to find out more about TERN were representatives of 3 Local Government entities – Tableland Regional Council, Cairns Council and Gold Coast City Council.
Lastly, TERN has been successful in receiving a Research Infrastructure Co-contribution Fund (RICF) grant from the Queensland Government, which will further our Queensland work over the next 3 years with the agricultural sector on carbon, water and energy fluxes and soil carbon sequestration.
I look forward to catching up again next month. Happy reading.
Dr Beryl Morris, TERN Australia Director
