Maurizio Santoro
Dr. Maurizio Santoro received the M.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University "Federico II", Naples, Italy, in 1998, the Lic. Eng. degree from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree from Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany, in 2003. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena, in 2004 and 2005. Since 2006 he is Senior Scientist at GAMMA Remote Sensing. He is involved as PI and Co-I in several international projects on the use of Earth observation data to characterize land surface parameters at local, regional and global scales. He led the technical development of ESA's BIOMASAR (2008-2012), GlobBiomass (2015-2018) and CCI Biomass (2018-ongoing) AGB mapping algorithms based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data. He is the main responsible for the AGB map products of the projects, including their distribution (e.g., through the CCI data portal) and user support. He is a member of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Kyoto & Carbon Initiative Science Team.
Sessions
Accurate global forest aboveground biomass (AGB) mapping is important for reducing the uncertainties in terrestrial carbon sink assessments. Current global approaches for AGB mapping, such as ESA CCI Biomass maps, rely on methods that are globally optimized; thus, they may result in lower performance when evaluated in specific regions. In this workshop, we aim to present the cloud-optimized and quality-filtered GEDI point observations and analyze how they can contribute to improved global biomass mapping. The outcomes of the workshop will help identify potential improvements to the datasets and define future experimentation to assess their contribution to AGB mapping.