Intelligent Earth Seminar: Emily Lines (Cambridge)

AI-enabled forest monitoring in three dimensions

High resolution remote sensing technologies, such as terrestrial and drone-based laser scanning, are able to capture the three dimensional structure of forests in unprecedented detail. Such data are leading to new knowledge on how forests function, including their carbon storage, biodiversity, and resilience to climate change and novel disease. However, high resolution datasets of forests are complex, unstructured, and very large, making them difficult to work with. Modern data science techniques, including artificial intelligence, are revolutionising how we can use these datasets to improve our understanding of forests at scale. In this talk I will present our new developments using AI to extract ecologically meaningful information from three dimensional remote sensing data, and how these enable new insights on forest structure and function in Europe.