Protecting the planet's forests starts with a simple question: what type of forest are we looking at? From space, an old-growth rainforest, a eucalyptus plantation, and an oil palm estate can look like the same patch of green. But they hold very different amounts of carbon and biodiversity. Telling them apart, and tracking how each patch changes over time, shows where conservation is working and where natural forests are being converted into plantations and farms.
Google DeepMind and Google Research, together with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), are releasing Forest Typology (For Ty) 2020, a global map that categorizes every 10-by-10-meter patch of land on Earth into six distinct forest and land-use types. The map serves as a key baseline for the EU's deforestation regulation. An early time series tracks how these forests changed each year from 2017 to 2025, including where natural forests were replaced by plantations or farms.
Most global maps only indicate whether trees are present, which is a challenge for those trying to protect natural forests. The European Union's regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR) requires that products such as coffee, cocoa, palm oil and wood products do not come from land that was forest in 2020 and has since been converted. Companies and regulators therefore need to know not just where trees are, but what kind of forest they form and what replaces it after a harvest.
For Ty sorts land into six categories based on definitions from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization: primary forest, naturally regenerating forest, planted forest, plantation forest, tree crops and agroforestry, and other land. Building on last year's Natural Forests of the World 2020 map, which separated natural forests from other tree cover, For Ty shows what kind of forest is present and how that changes each year.
Source: Google DeepMind Blog · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing