Glossary.
Terms that appear in CANOPY screens and reports, in plain language.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| MRV | Measurement, reporting and verification. The basic procedure of a carbon project. |
| AOI | Area of interest. The point you clicked or the polygon you drew. |
| NDVI | Normalised difference vegetation index. Leaf greenness from the contrast of near-infrared and red, from −1 to 1. Around 0.7 is dense temperate forest. |
| EVI | Enhanced vegetation index. Adds the blue band to reduce NDVI saturation over dense forest. |
| SAVI | Soil-adjusted vegetation index. Corrects soil reflectance where the canopy is sparse (L = 0.5). |
| NDMI | Normalised difference moisture index. Moisture in leaves and canopy; can fall before NDVI in drought or pest damage. |
| FVC | Fractional vegetation cover. Share of a cell covered by vegetation. |
| AGB | Aboveground biomass. Dry mass of stems, branches and leaves (t/ha). |
| BGB | Belowground biomass. Roots, set as AGB × root ratio (R). |
| tCO₂e | Tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. Carbon × 44/12. |
| NPP | Net primary production. Carbon fixed by photosynthesis minus the trees’ own respiration. |
| NEP | Net ecosystem production. NPP minus soil and microbial respiration; the net uptake. |
| SCL | Sentinel-2 scene classification layer, 0–11 per pixel. CANOPY uses only 4 (vegetation) and 5 (bare). |
| GEDI | NASA lidar on the International Space Station. Canopy height and biomass density (1 km grid). |
| SAR | Synthetic aperture radar. Sees the ground through cloud and at night. |
| InSAR | Measuring ground movement from the phase difference between two radar passes. |
| Additionality | Whether a reduction or removal would not have happened without the project. |
| Permanence | Whether stored carbon stays stored rather than being released by fire or felling. |
| Dynamic baseline | A control made of similar forest outside the site, compared on the same dates. |
| ARR · IFM · REDD+ | Afforestation, reforestation and revegetation / improved forest management / reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation. |
Work with us
Start with a satellite screening of your forests.
Send us your forest boundaries. We screen carbon stock, annual uptake and candidate quality from public satellite data first, then walk through the results with you. No field equipment is needed.