Brazil gears up to harness ESA's Biomass data

by ESA Staff Writers
Berlin, Germany (SPX) Nov 14, 2025

As the COP30 climate conference gets underway in Brazil, the world's attention is once again drawn to the plight of the Amazon - the planet's largest and most vital rainforest. With the European Space Agency's Earth Explorer Biomass satellite now in orbit, ESA is helping Brazil prepare to transform this new mission's groundbreaking data into actionable knowledge for protecting the rainforest and confronting climate change.

Launched earlier this year, the Biomass mission is designed to unlock novel insights into how forests are changing and their pivotal role in regulating Earth's carbon cycle.

It is the first satellite to carry a P-band synthetic aperture radar - its signal capable of penetrating forest canopies to measure woody biomass: trunks, branches and stems. These measurements serve as a proxy for carbon storage, the assessment of which is the mission's primary objective.

The delivery of these novel measurements is, without doubt remarkable, but it is important that users are equipped with the know-how to exploit them to their full potential.

To this end, ESA, the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) recently joined forces in Belem to assess how best to exploit Biomass' data.

ESA's Head of Green Solutions Division, Inge Jonckheere, said, "We're working to bridge the gap between available satellite data and their practical application in Brazil's national monitoring efforts, including reporting to international climate frameworks.

Collaborating closely with our Brazilian partners is essential to ensure that Biomass and other satellite data are fully integrated into their data processing systems, supporting the creation of local, national and regional data products."

ESA's Biomass Processor Development Manager, Muriel Pinheiro, noted, "Biomass is the first P-band synthetic aperture radar mission in space, and its data are expected to bring unprecedented insight into forest structure.

Preparing the Brazilian forestry community for using all the Biomass data products is fundamental, not only to ensure the early uptake of the data, but also to promote independent validation, which is fully aligned to the mission's open-science oriented strategy."

Alessandra Gomes from INPE, added, "The INPE - ESA collaboration will allow scientists to evaluate how the ESA Biomass mission can provide new and unprecedented insights into global forest carbon dynamics, especially in the Amazon where cloud cover and dense canopy conditions make monitoring particularly challenging."

Thanks to the long wavelength of P-band, the radar signal, depending on the polarisation, emitted by the Biomass satellite penetrates the whole forest layer and the signal is scattered back by the individual elements of the forest canopy.

In this way, the measured signal carries information about the forest structure and can be used to infer parameters such as forest biomass and forest height.