Climate meets nature accounting: Biodiversity baselining with Biometrio.earth
Written by: Kate Rocchio
The nascency of the nature and biodiversity sector, in combination with the multitude of indicators and technologies used for assessment, leaves most companies looking for a helping hand when entering the foray. The business case for nature has been firmly established, but the uptake of nature-positive practices has been cautious due to the topic’s complexity. NTC Member Biometrio.earth is one of a handful of members in our Collective working to accelerate this transition by bringing radical transparency to carbon and biodiversity conservation. One of the ways in which they do so? Educating the rest of our Collective with case studies and lessons from the field.
Biometrio.earth’s CBDO, Fabian Schmidt-Pramov, brought a recent case study from the forests of Indonesia to our weekly town hall, NTC Now. Sought out by Treeo, a climate-focused project developer, Biometrio.earth was approached for its academic and technical expertise in biodiversity. Together the two organizations collaborated with Indigenous actors to unite climate and biodiversity for a stronger business model. The task was the creation of an independent biodiversity data layer to prove the impacts and quality of Treeo’s projects. The value of what Biometrio.earth delivered was more than information, it was more informed decision-making, a competitive edge, better risk management, and reputation enhancement with clients.
A Match Made in Eden
Treeo’s traditional offering is to develop projects offering certified carbon sinks to clients interested in nature restoration. Treeo has a unique platform, in which their app allows growers to scan every tree that is planted at their restoration sites and calculate the biomass and carbon content of each tree. While the app is grounded in science and mathematics, Treeo wanted an extra layer of biodiversity assessment to help validate their claims on the environmental benefits of their offering. Before this partnership, Treeo had to rely on anecdotal evidence of species presence and abundance from the community.
Biometrio.earth entered the field with its suite of biodiversity monitoring equipment, including remote sensing, bioacoustics, wildlife cameras, and multiple monitoring cycles for validation. The fact sheet below provides more information about the technology offering.
Fabian described this partnership as a perfect match from the outset. All of the scientific grounding and technological capabilities that Treeo held for climate, Biometrio.earth had developed for biodiversity. In addition to Biometrio.earth’s AI-powered biodiversity analytics and monitoring technologies, they matched Treeo’s climate expertise with decades of their own experiences.
Unlike most young startups, Biometrio.earth has a different employee composition that can be reassuring to clients. Fabian noted with humor, “We are a very unusual startup because we are rather old and experienced people. And all of us have been involved in operating data-driven ecosystem monitoring systems.” The team’s experience in developing the nature monitoring field, and the ability to read landscapes, optimized Biometrio.earth to possess the best of modern nature tech and work experience.
Treeo and Biometrio.earth hit the ground running, in part thanks to their reliance on established technologies and their shared values streamlining the implementation process. Selecting Biometrio.earth’s In-Situ Starter Package to provide biodiversity snapshots of selected sites, the project took place over seven months and was broken down into the following stages…
Once the technologies were delivered to Treeo’s project site, all parties collaborated to train and test the data collection methodologies of Treeo’s local team and their Indigenous collaborators - including the Trees4Trees team and local farmers. Once training and testing were complete, the larger partnership undertook 3, 30-day monitoring cycles to increase accuracy and derive a more complete image of the selected project sites. Overlaying all of the in-situ data collection was the remote sensing coverage provided by Biometrio.earth.
Remote sensing (RS) not only provides a land cover analysis for project sites, but it also captures ecosystem connectivity and changes over time. This tech is improved by Biometrio.earth’s proprietary RS data processing system that can integrate data from other sources. Their data partnership with member Chloris Geospatial for access to their biomass data set, and other nature tech providers, takes data validation to the next level of assurance. The pairing with audio moths for bioacoustic analysis and wildlife cameras for visual confirmation provides in-situ corrective information for better species identification and accounting for the health of the ecosystem.
Analysis yielded a total of 53 identified species over 90 days. Forty-six of these species were birds, and the other seven were mammals. Several of the species were identified as endemic to Indonesia, and Biometrio.earth was able to provide evidence in the form of photo captures, timestamps, and geolocation to substantiate claims previously made on anecdotal evidence and sparse surveys. The project was not without its hiccups, as unforeseen weather conditions forced an adjustment in the monitoring schedule to overlap with the planting season. The increased human activity likely negatively impacted species richness and identification, but the project nevertheless achieved its main goals. Trust and transparency were brought to Treeo’s biodiversity projects at a time when project developers are under increasing scrutiny due to their involvement with the voluntary carbon market.
Where to Next?
The success of Biometrio.earth and Treeo’s collaboration, as well as the scientific suitability and compatibility of their offerings, has led to the creation of a formal partnership between the two parties. The value and transparency of Biometrio.earth’s quantified biodiversity impacts have been recognized and incorporated into Treeo’s newest Premium Carbon Removals. Clients of Treeo will now be able to capitalize on similar benefits, with independent, data-based, and scientifically sound evidence of biodiversity impacts. The two organizations will also be working towards an, as of yet, undisclosed collaboration that aims to combine their transparency- and data-driven carbon and biodiversity assessment approach.
You can learn more about Biometrio.earth’s case study by viewing Fabian’s slide deck here, or get in touch with Biometrio.earth and Treeo.
