VCL (Vegetation Canopy Lidar)
A spacecraft that would have used a radar-like imaging technique called
lidar (light detection and ranging) to map the height of the world's forests
to an accuracy of one meter. VCL would have shone five laser beams onto
the forest's canopy. By reconstructing the reflected light, the satellite
would have produced an accurate map of both the heights of the trees as
well as the topography of the underlying terrain. The data would have been
used to calculate the density and mass of the world's vegetation, giving
scientists the ability to monitor the forest's capacity to absorb carbon
dioxide. In addition, the satellite would have provided the first accurate
estimation of how much carbon is being released into Earth's atmosphere
through the burning of tropical rainforests. VCL was the first mission to
be selected in NASA's ESSP (Earth System Science
Pathfinder) program but is no longer being actively developed.
Related category
• SATELLITES
AND SPACE PROBES
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