Forest ecologist enhances global effort to solve environmental challenges with AI

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has tapped the expertise of Purdue University’s Jingjing Liang for a new initiative to bolster forest monitoring with artificial intelligence.

The new For Growth initiative is the latest effort of FAO’s AIM4Forests, a five-year program funded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The program aims to reduce deforestation and speed up forest restoration with the most advanced technological monitoring methods while boosting the institutional capacities of selected developing countries to lead these efforts. 

“The For Growth initiative’s focus on improving the measurements, reporting and verification of forest carbon using AI and ground-based data aligns with global priorities on climate action and sustainable forest management,” said Liang, associate professor of quantitative forest ecology in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. 

Addressing global forestry issues has become a hallmark of Liang’s work. In 2016, he spearheaded the establishment of the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative to advance forest data-sharing on a global scale.

Building on this foundation, in 2022 Liang launched Science-i, a cyberinfrastructure that provides 500-plus scientists worldwide with critical data and supercomputing support. Last May, Liang and Science-i brought dozens of scientists from around the world to Purdue for a workshop on collaborative forest research for a sustainable future. 

Liang is continuing this work during his sabbatical year in Rome as an international consultant to the FAO. He leads FAO’s efforts to integrate forest data with an AI-driven matrix model that he developed at Purdue. The model harnesses data from over 1.8 million forest plots globally to generate insights into forest dynamics at a wide range of scales.  

The most authoritative sources on global forest carbon sequestration and forest area come from FAO and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC continually updates its assessment methods to make them more accurate, reliable and verifiable. The new AIM4Forests program will contribute to that process. 

“We aim to provide countries with forest above-ground biomass growth rates that are technically less biased and more precise than existing ones under the IPCC standard recommendations,” said Javier Gamarra, a member of FAO’s Forest Monitoring and Data Platforms team.  

Liang works with the support of his colleagues back at Purdue and the resources of the university’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing. The team is collaborating with Gamarra and others from FAO, the World Resources Institute, the International Tropical Timber Organization and elsewhere to properly filter the data so that it aligns with IPCC definitions.  

The intent is for the new results eventually to appear in the IPCC’s Emissions Factor Database. Governments from the nations that signed the Paris Agreement use the IPCC standards to report the progress of their climate change mitigation efforts.  

The global scope of Liang’s matrix model sets it apart from traditional models. Liang’s model encompasses all forest types across the world. “The matrix model is also the first AI-powered forest growth model at this scale,” he said. 

“Most of the other matrix models only deal with one or two or maybe a handful of forest types in a very limited scale,” Liang said. This applied to the regional-scale matrix models that Liang developed for California and the Pacific Northwest as a PhD student and those he developed later for Alaska and Indiana. 

Liang’s matrix model uses AI algorithms to automatically scale-up and check its results to ensure that they fit with the data used to train the algorithms. 

“Compared to the traditional models, this is a revolutionary change, a giant leap from the traditional type of growth models,” Liang said. “And it involves very little human intervention in updating and upscaling the model.” 

Most developed countries have their own forest growth models. However, FAO has estimated that 80% of developing countries in the Global South lack such models. This leaves many nations without a forest growth model to guide their policymaking decisions.  

“They don’t know which action would lead to what consequences,” Liang said. “They need to know, for example, what would happen 20 years or 50 years from now if they clear-cut a certain forest area. The matrix model will provide them with a tool that can help guide their forestry and conservation decision-making.”  

Liang and Gamarra are planning an international workshop in Rome to get feedback from peers on the model data. The workshop also will explore current gaps in carbon accounting that the new data may partially explain, Gamarra said. 

“This initiative not only supports global forest management strategies, but also highlights Purdue’s role in developing solutions with real-world impact,” Liang said. 

About Purdue Agriculture

Purdue University’s College of Agriculture is one of the world’s leading colleges of agricultural, food, life and natural resource sciences. The college is committed to preparing students to make a difference in whatever careers they pursue; stretching the frontiers of science to discover solutions to some of our most pressing global, regional and local challenges; and, through Purdue Extension and other engagement programs, educating the people of Indiana, the nation and the world to improve their lives and livelihoods. To learn more about Purdue Agriculture, visit this site.

About Purdue University  

Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Writer: Steve Koppes