May Product Update (2/2): Identify Eligible Area & Calculate Carbon Estimates for Your ARR Project

Maya learned something new! You can now effortlessly compute the eligible area for your VM0047 ARR and VM0048 REDD+ project sites and calculate carbon sequestration estimates! 

Say goodbye to the hassle of manually cutting individual polygons for your eligible area. With our latest update, you can seamlessly import the eligible area as a newly created asset directly into Maya’s asset management platform! 🤯

‍Prospect Sites Faster with Eligible Area Checks ⛳

As the land cover often changes over time, determining the eligible area for future ARR or REDD+ projects can be challenging. Relying solely on data from a single year may not provide an accurate depiction, and conducting analyses across multiple years can be time-consuming. This is why we’ve built this new analysis for you! You can now quickly check the eligibility of your project site for ARR and REDD+ projects! 

For eligible area analysis on Maya, you can choose between an ARR project (following Verra’s VM0047 eligibility criteria) and a REDD+ project (VM0048). On the left side of the analysis output, you can see the area that fulfils all the land-based criteria of the respective methodology. On the right, the output depicted is a time-lapse map of the analysed site, including a buffer around buildings and water bodies and a minimum plot size threshold. You can read more on the selection criteria below.

As always, the output also comes as a clear text commentary: “The analysis began with an initial boundary covering a total of 8512.26 hectares. Taking into account the area and the specific land cover type of Tree, a total of 1450.2 hectares were determined eligible. [...]”

Selection Criteria

The eligible area for your ARR or REDD+ project is calculated based on three adjustable selection criteria: land cover type, buffer area, and minimum plot size. While the default option on Maya is always set to match Verra’s VM0047 or VM0048 methodology requirements, you can adjust the criteria filter to accommodate your needs. 

1. Land cover type: You can select the land cover type your site requires, e.g., only Grass, Crops, and Shrubs/Shrubs. As a result, you will only see the area that has been classified as such over the chosen time frame. For an ARR project, for example, this would automatically exclude all areas that have been classified as Tree or are not plantable because there is a Building or Water over the chosen time frame.

2. Buffer area: You can decide how large the buffer around land cover types Building and Water should be. Imagine a river flowing through your project site. Of course, you don’t want to start planting immediately adjacent to the river, so we will make sure that the analysis output accounts for that. The default setting on Maya includes a buffer of 10m (1 pixel) that is added around buildings and water bodies.

3. Minimum plot size: The analysis will compute all eligible plots on your project area that fulfil your land cover type criteria. If, for example, you only want to consider plots with a minimum size of 1 ha, you can select a minimum plot size. The default threshold on Maya is set at 0.5 ha to exclude very small polygons and enhance the accuracy of the analysis.

All of these computations are based on the Dynamic World dataset from Google and the World Resources Institute, which comes at a 10m global resolution. If you would like to use a different dataset in this analysis, just get in touch with us.

No More Manually Cutting Polygons! Import the New Polygon into Maya’s Asset Management Platform ✂️

Say goodbye to the hassle of manually cutting individual polygons. After the eligible area (i.e., the purple shape) has been computed for you, you can directly upload it to Maya’s asset management platform to treat it as a distinct site and run geospatial analyses on it.

Calculate Carbon Sequestration Estimates ⚓

Now, you can also calculate carbon sequestration estimates for your ARR projects for a selected number of tree species! The sequestration potential of any land depends on various factors such as climate, species, planting schedule, and management techniques. This analysis is directly built on top of the eligible area analysis, meaning that the output will be carbon estimates for the eligible area only.💡

Maya uses Bernal et al. (2018) to calculate the sequestration potential of the given area for a variety of species. You can select, e.g., between Oak, Tree, Broadleaf, and other species. 335 peer-reviewed reports were used to plot the above-ground biomass pools of standing forests representing planted forests, natural regeneration, agroforestry and mangrove restoration. In addition to species type, the analysis also takes regional factors and planting schedules into account.

So, what are you waiting for? Book your onboarding and get your ARR and REDD+ projects running!

Delphine from Maya Climate 🧡