Two Years of the Trees Around the GLOBE Student Research Campaign: 2018 – 2020

Two years of the Trees Around the GLOBE Student Research Campaign have passed. Over this time, there have been students and educators from over fifty countries participating in data collection for tree height, land cover, greenings, carbon cycle, among others. During the two years, there have been tens of thousands of data, submitted to the GLOBE database, that align to the campaign. Aligning to the campaign means that the students have collected data, analyzed their data, and developed student research projects, some for local science fairs, GLOBE US SRS, and the GLOBE IVSS. We also have lots of NASA GLOBE Observer citizen science data, from all seven continents, for the students to use in these student research projects. The third year of the Trees Around the GLOBE Student Research Campaign has begun on September 1, 2020.

The campaign brings together student research, online tools (Open Altimetry, Collect Earth, Google Earth Engine, NASA WorldView) and datasets for data analysis, comparisons to satellite data, and the development of student research projects. Even though this campaign is focused on tree height, it also focuses on how land cover, greenings, and carbon cycle measurements complement and align to tree height observations.

Why Tree He​ight?

Tree height is not just a measurement - it is a gateway to understanding many things about the environment and is the main indicator of how well an ecosystem can grow trees. The structure of tree canopies, the 3D arrangement of individual trees, has a huge effect on how ecosystems function and cycle through carbon, water, and nutrients. Tree height plays a vital role in land cover, greenings, and the carbon cycle.

Metrics – since 15 Sept 2018

20,297 Tree Height Measurements from 9.859 sites
15,391 Land Cover Measurements from 10,747 sites
11,801 Greenings Measurements from 488 sites

On March 26, 2019, NASA and the GLOBE Program released the NASA GLOBE Observer Trees Tool. This tool allows citizen scientists and campaign participants to observe and measure the height of trees using just their mobile device. Students can compare the Trees Tool tree height data with their hand-held clinometer tree height data and tree height data from ICESat-2.

You can visit the campaign website at: https://www.globe.gov/web/trees-around-the-globe