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Alemu Gonsamo‘s team in the Remote Sensing Laboratory had reason to celebrate this month.

The lab’s two-year research study for World Wildlife Fund Canada was presented at the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland and made national headlines in the Globe and Mail and CBC.

The Mapping Canada’s Carbon Landscape study found that 405 billion tonnes of carbon is stored in Canada’s ecosystem. The study, which was supported Maple Leaf Foods and the Metcalf Foundation, is the first-ever comprehensive analysis of its kind and has major implications for conversation planning and strategies.

Camile Sothe, a postdoctoral fellow in Alemu’s lab, led the two-year study. “I am incredibly proud of Camile,” says Alemu. “Camile led such a challenging project, worked with multiple collaborators, and established a working relationship with the Mushkegowuk Cree First Nations community in Northern Ontario to collect more reference data in the coming years to validate the maps.”