CTrees, a non-profit, has advanced its global carbon monitoring system following receipt of the 2024 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant. The funding, which included cash and cloud computing credits, enabled improvements to the organisation’s Jurisdictional Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (JMRV) platform — an open-access tool that provides detailed data on carbon stocks, forest area, emissions and land use.
The platform, designed to bridge a longstanding gap in reliable climate data, delivers annual measurements at a 100-metre resolution across 263 countries and territories. It incorporates satellite imagery, deep learning models and cloud infrastructure to attribute emissions to deforestation, degradation and fire, offering governments and researchers consistent data to evaluate climate policies and carbon credit schemes.
CTrees’ most recent release, covering the period 2000–2023, highlighted mixed trends. While emissions from deforestation in the tropics fell by 15 per cent overall — including a 28 per cent reduction across Amazon basin countries — emissions from tropical forest degradation increased by 73 per cent. The dataset also recorded Canada’s unprecedented 2023 wildfires, which burned more than 15 million hectares and generated an estimated 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
The non-profit’s work responds to growing demands for accurate, verifiable data to support international climate commitments, such as Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement and the United Nations’ global stocktake. With policymakers under pressure to track progress and enforce conservation efforts, CTrees’ data is already being integrated by initiatives including Climate TRACE, the LEAF Coalition and the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force.
By scaling its monitoring capacity, CTrees has positioned itself as a key source of operational forest carbon data at a time when governments are seeking robust tools to measure progress and identify risks in tackling climate change.
