What is the Biomass Explorer? Screening forest carbon sites before you commit.

What is Chloris Explorer?

Biomass Explorer is an app-based tool for screening candidate forest carbon project sites. You draw or upload a site and, within seconds, see its above-ground biomass stock and change at 30 meter resolution, with annual records going back to the year 2000. It runs on the same Chloris biomass record that developers, standards bodies and rating agencies use, so you can check what the data says about a prospect before purchasing a full data license.

Why is early-stage site screening difficult?

Project teams typically assess a large number of prospect sites, often more than can reasonably support a dedicated data license. For a site that may not be worth pursuing, a data license, monitoring commitment, or custom analysis can be difficult to justify.

As a result, early screening generally relies on free maps or on composited and modeled sources. This approach has three limitations:

• The first site analysis can conflict with the final record. A site's carbon history in a free or composite map can differ from the record that standards bodies and rating agencies rely on later.
• Gaps surface late. When the two disagree, it shows up in due diligence, after time and money have already gone into the site.
• Results don't compare. Each new prospect means re-running analysis, which is slow and gives results that vary across sites, analysts, and partner firms.

Who is Explorer for?

Explorer is built for teams that screen candidate carbon project sites to find those worth pursuing:

• Project developers screening sites for REDD+, ARR, IFM and other forest carbon projects.
• Consultancies doing diligence and feasibility work on behalf of developers, who need repeatable, comparable assessments across clients.
• Investors and fund managers doing early forest carbon due diligence on a pipeline of opportunities.

A typical use: a team needs to screen 5 to 50 candidate sites across the tropics and decide which 3 to 5 deserve a detailed assessment.

What does Explorer do?

Explorer gives you biomass and forest-change statistics for any site the moment you define it. The workflow takes three steps:

1. Define a site. Draw a polygon, rectangle or circle, or upload a shapefile, KML or GeoJSON. Sites can range from 10 to 200,000 hectares, and you can fine-tune the shape after drawing.
2. Read the record. Explorer shows biomass stock, change, cumulative change and forest metrics for the area. CO₂-equivalent appears alongside biomass, ready for carbon assessments.
3. Save, share or export. Save the site with notes, shared across your organization and synced across devices. Export any saved analysis as a CSV.

Other features include:

• An annual time series from 2000. Move the timeline and the stats, charts and map update live.
• Contextual layers. Tree-cover loss (Hansen/Global Forest Watch), ESA land cover and administrative boundaries.
• Navigation tools. Switch basemaps and search by country, region, city or latitude-longitude.
• Coverage. The pantropics and the continental United States, at 30m resolution.

Why does the underlying biomass record matter?

A screening decision is only as good as the data under it. Explorer's advantage is the data itself: the same trusted Chloris biomass data that diligence teams, standards bodies and rating agencies like Verra and Equitable Earth use.

Most screening tools build biomass from one of two approaches:

• Composites of open maps. These stitch together several sources. A site's history can shift between sources and years, which is a weak point when you are judging carbon history.
• Site-specific models. These can be credible, but each site needs its own setup and calibration, which makes quick side-by-side comparison hard.

The Chloris record is built by one consistent pipeline every year, back to 2000. That gives teams three practical benefits:

• Lower risk of late failure. Screening conclusions hold when a site moves forward, because they rest on the record that will be scrutinized later.
• Faster shortlisting. Teams compare prospects on one consistent record and narrow a pipeline without commissioning a custom analysis for each site.
• Smarter license spend. Teams see what the data shows for every prospect first, then spend license and analysis budget only on the sites that earn it.

How does Explorer fit with a Chloris data license?

FAQ:

• Where does Explorer have coverage?
  The pantropics and the continental United States, at 30 m resolution.
• How far back does the data go?
  Explorer shows an annual record from 2000 to 2025.
• What file formats can I upload?
  Shapefile (as a .zip), KML and GeoJSON, with up to 20 shapes per file. You can also draw a polygon, rectangle or circle directly on the map.
• How big can a site be?
  From 10 to 200,000 hectares per analysis.
• How many analyses are included?
  A standard subscription includes 200 analyses and 20 CSV exports per year, and up to 6 saved analyses at a time. Saved analyses are kept for 12 months.
• Can my team share sites?
  Yes. Saved analyses and notes are shared across your organization and synced across devices.
• Can I use Explorer data in a PDD or formal report?
  No. Explorer is for internal screening. Including Chloris data in a PDD or formal reporting requires a data license.
• Can I download the underlying data?
  No. Explorer shows statistics and charts and exports them as a CSV. GeoTIFFs and API access come with a Chloris data license.