Ecosystem Composition

Quantifying the biodiversity and biomass of Doty Ravine

Validating carbon credits

At Doty Ravine, a river wetland restoration site in the central valley of California, Blue Forest Conservation needed to quantify the additional growth provided by the restoration by species type to validate additional carbon sequestration capabilities. We were able to quantify the site coverage down to a resolution of 2cm with 87.5% accuracy. By segmenting an ecosystem down to the species level, we can provide incredibly detailed information to provide information for environmental compliance or carbon credit validation.

Scale

Unlike survey methods where botanists or biologists need to physically label and geolocate each alliance manually, the Understory process can scale rapidly and cost effectively. While a human can only cover an acre an hour, there are few scale limits on the capture of geospatial imagery. This means a site can be captured and processed in a fraction of the time.

Diversity

Natural systems are incredibly dynamic and interwoven, two key issues when trying to identify and quantify biomass coverage. However, with accurate training data the model can identify an incredibly diverse set of species. At Doty Ravine, we ended working with over 40 species across 20 acres.

Detail

The resolution of the input data dictates the final product. In this case, the client wanted to account for all vegetation types, including those that only present at resolutions of 2cm. The high resolution of the data and the accuracy of our model provide a total coverage with 87.5% accuracy.