The European Space Agency will use New Zealand research sites to support its Biomass Mission, a satellite program designed to deepen understanding of how forests influence the global carbon and water cycles. According to SCION Research, eight sites in Northland, Auckland, and Manawatu-Wanganui will provide direct measurements of forest productivity, carbon sequestration and health, offering insights into how drought and extreme weather events affect native and exotic forests.
These sites, however, are not new to science. They have already been central to the Forest Flows program and the NZ–NASA Joint Research Partnership in Earth Observation, projects that have deployed sensor networks, remote sensing, big data and artificial intelligence to track forest dynamics.
Dean Meason, a scientist with the Bioeconomy Science Institute, said New Zealand’s diverse climatic zones, geology and vegetation make it an ideal proving ground for ESA’s models: “Having one tree species (radiata pine), planted across different sites, means the Biomass algorithms can be more accurately developed, building a better understanding of how trees interact with the environment, especially water.”
The Biomass mission is expected to deliver detailed information about the state of New Zealand’s forests and how they are changing. Local research will focus on secondary products that measure water inside trees, shedding light on how soils and environmental conditions influence water uptake and use.
“The research will help us better understand how soils and the environment impact tree water uptake and water use,” Meason said. “It will also show us how Biomass data can be combined with data from other satellite missions to better understand the hydrological cycle in temperate and tropical forests throughout the world – and how tree growth and productivity influence the hydrological cycle.”
Much of the groundwork has been laid by the Forest Flows program, which developed novel technologies for monitoring soil moisture, tree stem growth and sap flow. That infrastructure now underpins TWIST-NZ, a project co-led by Meason that integrates field data, airborne campaigns and satellite observations to support ESA’s calibration and validation efforts.
The program is funded by New Zealand’s Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment and is designed to enhance the reliability of Biomass products for ecosystem monitoring, hydrological modelling and forest management.
TWIST-NZ also benefits from the NZ–NASA partnership, which is investigating water movement in the Far North and the influence of land use on regional hydrology. The findings are expected to provide valuable information for local communities, iwi and government agencies managing freshwater resources.
The collaboration extends beyond New Zealand. TWIST-NZ brings together experts in forest hydrology, synthetic aperture radar science and algorithm development from Germany’s Aerospace Centre, Jülich Forschungszentrum and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The team combines field-based monitoring with advanced SAR and P-band algorithm development, ensuring ESA’s Biomass Mission has the scientific rigour and international coordination needed to deliver reliable global insights.
For New Zealand, the project underscores its growing role in world-leading forest science. “This project raises the importance of NZ for such satellite missions for ESA, as well as NASA, and how NZ researchers are developing valuable world-leading science in these areas,” Meason said.
- For more information about the mission, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from April 2025.
