Episode 17: Phones, Drones, and Satellites: Measuring Forest Carbon

Solving Climate, Naturally

In this episode, we speak with Aakash Ahamed, a remote sensing scientist developing methods to measure forest carbon using instruments deployed on phones, drones, planes, and satellites. He is the co-founder and CEO of Working Trees, a start-up focused on leveraging mobile phone sensing technology to improve ease, accuracy, and transparency in tree carbon monitoring. In this episode, Aakash shares Working Trees’ origin story at Stanford, the company’s journey to find product-market fit, plans for scale, and the challenge with measuring trees from space.

In this episode, we touch on:

How forest carbon is measured today, and the challenges and costs of doing so

The sensors already in our mobile phones, and their usefulness for measuring forest carbon at low cost today… and on the flip-side, the limitations of satellites

Carbon credits as bridge for financing for critical natural climate solutions

Why Aakash is excited about the SEC’s climate disclosure regulation

The importance of the scientific process and peer-reviewed papers to building trust with new technology

Want to learn more? Check out these resources:

Working Trees website

Working Trees dashboard of project sites

Comprehensive Analysis of the SEC’s Landmark Climate Disclosure Rule

Working Trees iOS Application

Working Trees Android Application

Working Trees’ peer reviewed research

Episode recorded on: March 8, 2024