Google DeepMind and partners release Forest Typology 2020, a global forest type map at 10-meter resolution with 90% accuracy
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
An open global map has appeared that tells primary forests from plantations with 90% accuracy.
The ForTy map was created by Google DeepMind, Google Research, the World Resources Institute and IIASA: each 10-by-10-meter patch is assigned to one of six categories — primary forest, naturally regenerating forest, planted forest, plantation forest, tree crops and agroforestry, and other land. It was trained on about 1.7 million labeled locations from expert surveys and national datasets, using satellite-image embeddings from AlphaEarth Foundations. According to the authors, the forest type is identified correctly 90% of the time and forest is told apart from non-forest 95% of the time. The data is open on Google Earth Engine, with a time series of changes for 2017–2025.
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