Farmers Review Africa July/Aug 2017 Farmers Review Africa July/Aug 2017 | Page 69
Tech & innovation
Artificial intelligence can help
fight deforestation
A new technique using arti cial intelligence to predict
Tracking the drivers of deforestation
only forecast average deforestation levels in DRC over
where deforestation is most likely to occur could help To address the problem Maschler and other scientists large swathes of land, said Maschler. "Now, we can say:
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) preserve its at the Washington-based WRI used a computer 'actually the corridor along the road between these two
shrinking rainforest and cut carbon emissions, algorithm based on machine learning, a type of villages is at risk," Maschler said by phone late on
researchers have said. arti cial intelligence. ursday.
Congo's rainforest, the world's second-largest aer the e computer was fed inputs, including satellite Where to focus efforts
Amazon, is under pressure from farms, mines, logging derived data, detailing how the landscape in a number e analysis will allow conservation groups to better
and infrastructure development, scientists say.
of regions, accounting for almost a h of the country, decide where to focus their efforts and help the
had changed between 2000 and 2014. e programme government shape its land use and climate change
Protecting forests is widely seen as one of the cheapest was asked to use the information to analyse links policy, said scientist Elizabeth Goldman who co-
and most effective ways to reduce the emissions driving between deforestation and the factors driving it, such authored the research.
global warming. But conservation efforts in DRC have as proximity to roads or settlements, and to produce a
suffered from a lack of precise data on which areas of detailed map forecasting future losses.
the country's vast territory are most at risk of losing
e DRC has pledged to restore three million hectares
(11,583 square miles) of forest to reduce carbon
their pristine vegetation, said omas Maschler, a Overall the application predicted that woods covering
researcher at the World Resources Institute (WRI). "We an area roughly the size of Luxembourg would be cut
emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement, she said.
don't have ne-grain information on what is actually down by 2025 - releasing 205 million metric tons of But Goldman said the bene ts of doing that would be
happening on the ground," he told the omson carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. outweighed by more than six times by simply cutting
Reuters Foundation.
predicted forest losses by 10 percent.
e study improved on earlier predictions that could
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