Salford scientist to lead Royal Society forests research meeting
Friday 8 April 2016
MEASURING the world’s forests is a fascinating endeavour and one of the keys to understanding the greenhouse effect and tackling global warming.The University of Salford is paying a leading role in the use of terrestrial laser scanners which scientists claim will revolutionise the way in which we measure forests and carbon biomass.
Professor Mark Danson from the School of Environment & Life Sciences recently won support from the Royal Society to lead an international scientific meeting of researchers to discuss The terrestrial laser scanning revolution in forest ecology.
Meeting co-organizers are from the University of Massachusetts Boston, Newcastle University and University College London, and amongst the sixteen invited speakers are researchers from Australia, United States, Finland, Netherlands and the UK.
More accurate
Danson, Professor of Environmental Remote Sensing and Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow 2013/14, explains: “Terrestrial laser scanners, or TLS for short, provide us with detailed 3D measurements of forests, by firing millions of laser pulses up into the canopy.
“The information recorded can be used to measure forest structure with unprecedented accuracy, particularly the size and shape of the trees, as well as their mass.”
“These measurements are set to revolutionize the way in which ecologists and other scientists measure forests, particularly their change over time, and will help determine whether forests are acting as carbon sinks, absorbing excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or carbon sources, adding to the greenhouse effect.”
Track record
The Royal Society support builds on Salford’s outstanding track-record in the rapidly developing field of TLS for environmental applications, including a new instrument, the Salford Advance Canopy Analyser (SALCA), developed by Professor Danson’s team. Previous support for the research has been provided by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council, and U.S. National Science Foundation.
The meeting will lead to a Special Themed issue of the Royal Society’s inter-disciplinary journal Interface Focus, with Professor Danson as lead editor.
Professor Danson said: “This support from the UK’s most eminent scientific society will be a showcase for Salford’s world-leading research in TLS applications in ecology. It will also provide a forum for developing this research field, along with other key players from around the world.”
The Theo Murphy International Scientific Meeting will be held at The Royal Society’s Chicheley Hall in February 2017.
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