Including Family-owned Forests in the Fight Against Climate Change

Summary: While the economic forecast for 2023 might be gloomy, the demand for carbon offsets continues to grow. As North America’s leading developer of forest carbon offsets, Finite Carbon is pioneering technological advancements that leverage geospatial information to automate the carbon project development process. These innovations reduce transaction costs, creating new opportunities for family-owned forests to join the carbon marketplace, increasing substantially the total forest area eligible for high-quality carbon offset projects, particularly in the Southeastern United States. Please join Donal as he shares examples of how Finite Carbon applies geographical sciences to preserve forests for generations to come.

About the speaker: Donal O’Leary is an Applied Remote Sensing Scientist, building solutions for Finite Carbon’s remote sensing, GIS, and cloud-native compute pipelines. Combining his years of on-the-ground conservation experience with his technical training, Donal uses Earth observation data to create robust, precise, and meaningful data products. Donal’s first act was as a trail crew leader for the National Park Service and a wilderness guide across the western USA. Seeking a greater impact, Donal earned his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland where he studied and published alongside NASA scientists as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Outside of work hours, Donal is probably eating well, collecting memories and experiences with his partner, or exploring the mountains near his home in Estes Park, Colorado.