Trees have an incredible ability to absorb carbon — which means protecting, planting and restoring forests are a (relatively) easy way to address global warming. Climate change, however, is making it more complicated. Our forests are (quite literally) going up in smoke, which has far worse consequences than one might expect. In this episode, we explore the role forests play in carbon sequestration, how increasingly intense fires are threatening to turn them into a carbon bomb, and how technology (think drones, satellites and lasers) can assist in our replanting and conservation efforts. The forests have helped us, it’s time to help them. 

Featured in this episode:

• Lola Fatoyinbo-Agueh is a NASA scientist. Working in the biospheric sciences lab, she studies forest ecology and ecosystem structure, using LiDAR to GEDI (more on that later) to map and measure the amount of carbon sequestered by trees.
• Faisal Moola, a biologist. He’s an associate professor at the University of Guelph, and an expert on forest conservation, biodiversity (conducting inventory of areas using drones) as well Indigenous partnerships. He helps us understand what we’ve done in the past to hurt forests, and how we can heal them.
• Amy Cardinal Christianson is a fire research scientist, who specializes in Indigenous fire stewardship and talks about the role of fire in the overall health of trees. She is also a host of a podcast called “Good Fire.”
• Stephen Elliott is the co-founder and research director of the Forest Restoration Research Unit of Chiang Mai University (FORRU-CMU) in Northern Thailand. He works with communities in replanting efforts and has a particular interest in automated forest restoration.

Further Reading: 

• How to build forests to combat climate change
• Tree Planting Is Booming. Here’s How That Could Help, or Harm, the Planet
• One of Canada’s biggest carbon sinks is circling the drain
• Climate change could expand forests. But will they cool the planet? | Science
• Drone-based technology remotely assesses health of trees impacted by climate change
• Landsat’s Critical Role in Forest Management

The Mission from MaRS initiative was created to help scale carbon reducing innovations by working to remove the barriers to adopting new technology. Mission from MaRS thanks its founding partners, HSBC, Trottier Family Foundation, RBC Tech for Nature and Thistledown Foundation. It has also received generous support from Peter Gilgan Foundation, BDC, EDC and Mitsubishi Corporation Americas. Learn more about the program at missionfrommars.ca.

Solve for X is brought to you by MaRS, North America’s largest urban innovation hub and a registered charity. MaRS supports startups and accelerates the adoption of high-impact solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. For more information, visit marsdd.com.