RE:Growth—A Google Earth Engine toolkit analyzing secondary forest carbon dynamics in the Brazilian Amazon

Secondary forests, forest naturally regrowing on areas of previously deforested, now abandoned lands are crucial to help maintain and increase the carbon sink on land, helping to tackle the climate and ecological emergencies. There is a growing research field on improving our understanding of the carbon dynamics of secondary forests, often using novel remote sensing techniques to map the temporal and spatial patterns of change. However, the full datasets from the research are often not fully accessible to all users, either because the whole dataset is not published, or because it is presented in a specialist format. Given both the scientific and policy interest in forest-carbon dynamics, it is critical to ensure datasets are accessible to a wide range of audiences. 

Here we present “RE:Growth” – a user-friendly toolkit designed in Google Earth Engine, enabling users to view and download the aboveground carbon dynamics spatially and temporally in secondary forests in one of the largest tropical forest regions; the Brazilian Amazon. Designed to be easily updated as more temporal and spatial data are made available, ‘RE:Growth’ provides spatial and aggregated information on carbon flux dynamics in secondary forests through time based on Earth Observation. Uniquely, the user can draw their own region or select a jurisdictional boundary in the Brazilian Amazon to focus the analysis to their region of interest. Such information can be used within the measurement, reporting and verification framework, which is critical for results-based payments at all scales. For example, the toolkit can be used to provide spatial and quantitative data to inform the spatial prioritization of secondary forest conservation and expansion in line with Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to the Paris Agreement.