©FAO/Cory Wright
The Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) Research and Development (R&D) Coordination Component hosted the fourth session of the virtual GFOI R&D Exchange series, “Uncertainty quantification and reporting,” on 18 November 2025 from 16.00 to 18.00 CET (GMT +1.00).
Reliable carbon reporting is a cornerstone of meaningful climate action, yet understanding and conveying the uncertainty behind those numbers remains a major challenge. This session highlighted a diverse suite of tools and approaches, ranging from model-assisted and geostatistical approaches to Monte Carlo–based simulations, all aimed at helping countries better quantify and interpret uncertainty in their estimates.
Participants – national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory compilers, remote sensing specialists, policy makers, researchers and more – heard about pre-operational and actionable methods directly from countries and leading experts. Together, they explored strategies to enhance the transparency and credibility of national forest monitoring systems and GHG reporting.
The session opened with Daniela Requena from the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, who gave an introduction to R&D Exchanges, the CALM Framework and the agenda, emphasizing the importance of collaboration across research and operational communities. Javier García-Pérez Gamarra from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) followed with an overview of the importance of uncertainties in forest monitoring, underscoring the need to take steps further into observing uncertainties from policy-making viewpoints.
A deeper dive into challenges came from Robert Kennedy (Oregon State University), who discussed how to communicate uncertainty using Earth Observation to policymakers and technical users, drawing from experiences in the NASA Carbon Monitoring System programme. The agenda then shifted to methodological approaches as Chad Babcock (University of Minnesota) explored design-based, model-assisted and model-based forest biomass estimation. A technical highlight of the exchange was Gael Sola’s (FAO) presentation of {mocaredd}: Monte Carlo Simulations for REDD+ uncertainty analysis.
The session concluded with preliminary feedback on uncertainties for R&D from Javier García Pérez (Gamarra) and an extended Q&A moderated by Daniela Requena, allowing GFOI experts and audience members to discuss implementation challenges and emerging needs (see the Slido results for Group 1 and Group 2). Final remarks and next steps were shared by Chad Babcock and Daniela Requena, who emphasized continued collaboration to refine uncertainty assessment tools and approaches, as well as continued discussions within the GFOI community on how uncertainties are communicated to decision makers.
To watch the exchange in its entirety, please view the recording below or click here.
Over 200 individuals connected in the exchange, with 34 percent identifying as women. In addition, the majority of participants were between the ages of 35 and 50 (54 percent), followed by those 51 and above (25 percent) and between the ages of 18 and 35 (21 percent).
In terms of professional background, the respondents represented the following industries: governments (40 percent), research and academia (22 percent), international organizations (18 percent), non-government organizations (11 percent) and the private sector (9 percent).
Respondents with the highest representation come from Africa (29 percent), closely followed by Europe (22 percent) and Latin America and the Caribbean (20 percent). The least number of participants came from Asia-Pacific (18 percent) and North America (11 percent). This global engagement demonstrates the widespread interest in research and reporting on uncertainty quantification and reporting.
The GFOI R&D Exchanges are an online series of regular events designed to foster discussions on evolving forest monitoring methods and their applications in national forest monitoring systems. These meetings serve as a dynamic platform for our research community and interested stakeholders to exchange information and insights on recent research achievements and persisting gaps. The sessions will focus mainly on the current GFOI R&D priorities: biomass and emission factor estimation, deforestation alerts, uncertainty analysis, land use and greenhouse gas emissions and uptakes, including tropical wetland monitoring.
Read the main findings from past sessions:
Stay tuned for upcoming sessions!
