By Daniel Melling

Since its launch in 2022, CTrees has relied on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build cutting-edge data tools that support governments, companies, and organizations in their efforts to protect and restore forests and other carbon-rich ecosystems globally.

Now AWS has selected CTrees as a winner of the 2023 AWS IMAGINE Grant, a public grant opportunity open to registered 501(c) nonprofit organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom who are using technology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. As a winner in the Go Further, Faster category, which recognizes highly innovative projects using advanced cloud services, CTrees will receive promotional credits from AWS and engage with AWS technical specialists to improve its cloud infrastructure. AWS judged the proposals on factors including the innovative and unique nature of the project, impact on mission-critical goals, and clearly defined outcomes and milestones.

CTrees will use the grant funding to integrate information from the forthcoming NASA-ISRO (NISAR) satellite, the world’s most advanced radar satellite, into our data platform. The NISAR mission will launch in early 2024 and is designed to halve the uncertainty associated with global carbon flux from land.

By applying AWS infrastructure and innovative deep learning models, CTrees will transform information from the more than 10 terabytes of raw data the NISAR mission acquires every week into operational insights for policymakers and decision makers.

CTrees will make the data available in its free Jurisdictional MRV tool, the only source of annual information on carbon stocks, emissions, removals for all forest and nonforest areas in every country globally. First introduced in 2022, the tool has several applications for governments to measure and report on progress, design policy, and access climate finance:

  • Provides advanced capabilities to countries with limited MRV resources to fully evaluate and report on their emissions reduction efforts, and offers countries with robust inventory systems the ability to increase the frequency of their reporting.

  • Sets an independent benchmark for Paris Agreement’s global stocktake and evaluation of Nationally Determined Contributions.

  • Offers MRV for developing nations to secure finance through jurisdictional approaches to REDD+, the framework for forest protection and emissions reduction established by the UNFCCC.

    • Dr. Sassan Saatchi, CEO of CTrees, said "the NISAR mission will bring an extraordinary volume of data on how ecosystems are changing globally – but making the leap to operational insights for governments and business requires additional processing that is only possible in advanced cloud systems. The AWS IMAGINE grant will support this innovative work at the cutting edge of data science, bringing faster and more accurate information to any organization looking to measure progress on natural climate solutions.”

    For more information on the AWS IMAGINE Grant, visit aws.amazon.com/imagine-grant