CARBOSPACE

CARBOSPACE is developing an automated solution for monitoring carbon sequestration and biomass via satellite, to make carbon credits in Australia more reliable. Thanks to Kermap's NIMBO platform, the project provides validated indicators over vast territories.

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CARBOSPACE aims to automate the tracking of biomass and carbon emissions avoided through the prevention of uncontrolled fires. © Kermap

Carbon audit and biomass monitoring from space

Overview

Context

In a fast-growing global carbon market, the CARBOSPACE project is part of a context in which the transparency and reliability of carbon credits have become essential to meeting climate challenges. Australia, with its vast territories and structured carbon certification system, represents an ideal testing ground for large-scale satellite tracking solutions. The country is one of the world leaders in the carbon offsetting market, but projects are faced with a major challenge: how to effectively verify, on a large scale, the actual sequestration of carbon in dynamic ecosystems such as savannahs?

To meet this need, CARBOSPACE offers an innovative solution combining science, technology and field expertise. Led by KERMAP, in partnership with Carbon Intel in Australia and the universities of Rennes 2 and Newcastle (Australia), the project aims to develop an automated tool for tracking biomass and emissions avoided through the prevention of uncontrolled fires.

At the heart of the system is NIMBO, KERMAP's geospatial platform, which processes satellite data from Sentinel-2, SPOT 6/7 and various field sources. It enables a fine, continuous analysis of vegetation and its growth (via NDVI, EVI, NPP), as well as slash-and-burn activities (via NBR), with the capacity to detect changes over several hundred thousand hectares.

This approach is reinforced by extensive validation work, carried out jointly with Carbon Intel, on Australian pilot sites. The results thus obtained are integrated into an automated chain, optimized for scale-up. The whole process is made available to users via an interactive dashboard, designed to be accessible to project developers, auditors, regulators and private players involved in offset initiatives.

Beyond its Australian application, the project is designed to be reproducible in other regions of the world facing similar challenges: tropical forests, African savannahs or even agricultural environments. By combining scientific rigor, technological power and operational anchoring, CARBOSPACE intends to help make carbon offset mechanisms more credible, more traceable and more useful in the fight against climate change.

Methodology

Collection and processing of Sentinel-2, SPOT 6/7 and field data
Vegetation monitoring with NDVI, EVI, NPP indices
Fire and burn monitoring via NBR, automatic detection (NBR, Normalized Burn Ratio, is an index that uses the near-infrared (NIR) and short-wave (SWIR) bands to detect changes in land cover, particularly after a fire)
Validation of indicators with field data and high-resolution images
Automation in NIMBO, dedicated API, AI for massive processing
Interface: development of an interactive dashboard for end-users