Keeling Curve

Primary Project Category:

Project Summary / Description:

Currently, a very small percentage of amazing technology is being built for the purpose of helping the frontlines of the fight against deforestation and forest degradation. 

Our company, Understory Labs, empowers indigenous forest communities of the Amazon by codeveloping advanced forest monitoring systems designed to help in mapping, measuring and monitoring of their forest lands combined with their traditional ecological knowledge across millions of hectares of forest landscapes. 

Our founding team has its roots in the global south and with forest conservation and sciences of the tropics. We have seen firsthand the impact of the social context on the success of a conservation project and through some of these experiences we have learned that amplifying the work these communities have been doing for hundreds of years is a neglected but high impact endeavor.

How Project Affects Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions:

Removes/stores GHGs (e.g., projects that capture, sequester, or otherwise enhance the "sinks" that accumulate and store GHGs)

Best Estimate of GHG Avoidance/Reduction of This Project (Tonnes CO2 Equivalent/Year):

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

Our company, Understory Labs, empowers indigenous forest communities of the Amazon by codeveloping advanced forest monitoring systems designed to help in mapping, measuring and monitoring of their forest lands combined with their traditional ecological knowledge across millions of hectares of forest landscapes. 

We do this by building tools that create power symmetry of data and technology for the future of the communities. Our solution is contextual in both social and technology aspects. It is based on the community-driven forest monitoring framework, always starting with: what's the benefit to the community to use a forest monitoring system.

The solution has 3 main components:

1. Mapping: An offline mobile and desktop application allowing to map, organize and localize what the community deems important to them. This being ecological, cultural or conservation operation oriented. The data is governed by the community and potentially shared with partner NGOs for reporting, carbon projects or other conservation project management decided by the community. 

2. Measuring: Using a combination of drones and sensors (LiDAR), we are building the most advanced but user friendly hardware-software system to measure the health, productivity and carbon of a forest and restoration efforts in the tropics.

3. Monitoring: This element puts together the mapping and measuring data gathered to create visualizations, reporting and predictions on the health and carbon levels of the forest area conserved by the community.

Sub-Categories:

Mission Statement:

We are a group of forest conservationists, engineers and scientists with backgrounds from communities of the Amazon, Yale, NASA, and Berkeley National Lab building technology tools to help Amazon forest communities monitor their land while creating power symmetry of data and technology.

We are here to listen, learn and help build resilience into forest landscapes adapting to a changing climate driven by the needs of the steward communities on the ground.


Our focus has been in Peruvian Amazon forests so far.