Autumn. Some may say the most beautiful time of the year with respect to the changing nature sceneries. Others might say the most awful time of the year due to the unpredictable rainy weather. Although I come home soaked everyday from my 20-minute bike ride, I still manage to get a smile on my face by simply looking around – the sun trying to find its way peeking through the dark rainy clouds, the bright colors that light up boring streets and pavements covered with various shaped leaves.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said: “Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people”. Did you know that approximately 31% of Earth’s land surface is covered by forests? But did you also know that this number is decreasing at an alarming rate? An equivalent to 27 soccer fields of forestation is lost per minute, and this is a starting number… (WWF, 2019). Since the beginning of this year 41,858 fires have been recorded in the Brazilian Amazon, burning down not only the trees but also wildlife and other habitat (Bajpaj, 2019).
With an ever-rising population on planet Earth and many illegal developments on logging still being encouraged in different cultures, a major declaration on forests was signed at the UNI Climate Summit in September. In this declaration a joint commitment has been made in order to end global deforestation by 2030 (Bajpaj, 2019). But how exactly can this be done?
This is the point where Big Data and Artificial Intelligence step in! There are multiple initiatives talking the problem of deforestation and trying to restore balance in our ecosystem.
Firstly, World Wildlife (WWF) and TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade specialist tackling global timber exports, have partnered up with data scientists from Virginia Tech University (WWF, 2019). Their goal is to develop a software tool and algorithms using publicly available data to identify suspicious timber exports to fight the greatest cause of deforestation, illegal logging of mainly timber with high value (Brookhouse, 2019).
Next to this, Global Forest Watch (GFW) was created, an online platform combining hundreds of thousands satellite images, high-tech data processing and crowdsourcing to provide near real-time data on forests on Earth (Sizer, Cheung and Anderson, 2014). This technology will serve as an enabler for many companies and organizations to localize harmed area’s and track illegal activities.
A more recent example is 20tree.ai. CEO Den Bakker says:” Our system enables us to gain insight into the impact of deforestation by combining AI and satellite imagery, to gain knowledge at a scale which was previously unattainable.” (Brookhouse, 2019). The forest management system can monitor huge scales of forests whilst providing near real-time intelligence into forest and wood-inventory, so that actionable insights can be established. The ultimate goal of 20tree.ai is to create a world in with a more efficient use of resources and a limited negative impact (Brookhouse, 2019)
All in all, these are great initiatives using high-end technology for a greater cause – climate action. Will these innovations make us reach the goal to end deforestation on a global scale by 2030?
References
Bajpaj, P. (2019) How Big Data Can Help Fight Deforestation, Nasdaq, viewed 17 October 2019, < https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/how-big-data-can-help-fight-deforestation-2019-04-12>.
Brookhouse, O. (2019) Can Big Data help reduce Deforestation in the Amazon, Telefonica, viewed 17 October 2019, < https://business.blogthinkbig.com/can-big-data-help-reduce-deforestation-in-the-amazon/>.
Sizer, N, Cheung, L, and Anderson, J. (2019) Counting trees to save the woods: using big data to map deforestation, The Guardian, viewed 17 October 2019, <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/oct/02/counting-trees-to-save-the-woods-using-big-data-to-map-deforestation>.
WWF. (2019). Saving Forests with Big Data and Forensics, WWF, viewed 17 October 2019, <https://www.worldwildlife.org/projects/saving-forests-with-big-data-and-forensics>.
https://www.traffic.org/what-we-do/species/timber/
Hey Britt,
thank you for the very insightful blog post! I especially enjoyed that your article involves a topic that I haven’t seen yet on this website and therefore gives a fresh new perspective. The applications of AI and Big Data to fight illegal deforestation seem indeed very intriguing and I was wondering did these projects already bear some fruit, i.e. did they manage to track down illegal activities or should they still be considered more of a proof of concept? I also think that while these projects seem promising, illegal deforestation probably only accounts for a very small portion of actual deforestation happening on a global scale. To truly fight deforestation and even restore some of our lost forests we need to consider the underlying incentive behind deforestation, which is primarily growing need for food, cattle, and shelter due to our growing population. In Brazil, for example, large parts of the country are deforested to provide area for farming, especially food for animal agriculture such as corn, soy and wheat. A growing need for urban space is another factor relevant in this context.
Since our population growth will probably not stop until 2050 if recent reports are to be believed, the only way i can see deforestation being stopped is through innovation in agriculture and changes in food consumption patterns. If agriculture can increase harvests on smaller areas, for instance through vertical farming, and people consume less meat in general, the need to free up more space will be less pressing in the future.
What do you think about my ideas?
Hello Britt,
Thank you for this incredibly interesting post. While it’s great that there are a number of initiatives to combat deforestation, one of the major problems on our planet, I wonder if we’re not just trying to solve symptoms instead of looking at the core of the problem. What good will these initiatives do when world leaders do not believe in the need for a change in our behavior with regards to the planet? Just this summer, Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, declared that the Amazon is ‘theirs’ and deforestation rates in the country have rapidly increased.