3D ‘digital twin’ rainforest maps could help reforestation programs in Costa Rica

New technology is helping scientists to create 3D maps of tropical rainforests and gain a much clearer understanding of their volume, health and biodiversity. Creating “digital twins” provides new levels of data that can support more effective reforestation programs as well as produce an accurate record of the forest’s carbon storage potential, something that could prove attractive to companies looking to invest in forest restoration programs.

Digital twins are virtual models that are continuously updated by new, incoming data and are more commonly associated with industrial sites such as oil rigs or factories. While mapping nature, which is in a constant state of flux, rather than something man-made, does pose new problems, scientists are using the technology to produce accurate reproductions of the natural world to support conservation programs.

“Digital twins are potentially game-changing when it comes to rainforest preservation and species conservation,” Robert Muggah, co-founder of Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian social and environmental think tank, tells Mongabay in a written response.

“The fusion of remote sensing and machine learning techniques could revolutionize our understanding of forests and biodiversity, as well as approaches to protecting and regenerating nature.”

Digital twins can also support better forest management, he explains, particularly when assessing threats to “hotspot” areas that are prone to forest dieback or savannization. “In creating a digital copy of the forest, twins capture a wide range of variables, from forest composition to soil moisture, providing early warning signals,” he says.

Initiatives such as Earth Active, which has brought together Brazil’s’ national space agency, the University of Sao Paulo and MapBiomas — a partnership that is looking at changes in the Brazilian landscape — has already started scanning areas of the Amazon Rainforest, he says, creating a new baseline that can help guide climate mitigation efforts.

In Costa Rica, La Gamba Field Station, a small facility in Piedras Blancas National Park in the southern region of Puntarenas run by the University of Vienna, has teamed up with Hexagon, a Swedish green tech company that specializes in remote sensing and mapping, to map the biodiversity and health of the park.

Created in 1991 and covering more than 14,000 hectares (34,600 acres), it contains some of the most biodiverse tropical forests in the world, with more than 200 different tree species, as well as animals including jaguars (Panthera onca), ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and spectacled caimans (Caiman crocodilus).

Since 2010, the NGO Regenwald der Österreicher (Rainforest of the Austrians) has bought more than 4,000 hectares (9,885 acres) of the park from private companies and gifted it to Costa Rican authorities. The NGO has also purchased land to create a buffer zone around the forest in order to protect it from logging as well as encroachment from banana and oil palm plantations.

Funds have been raised to buy areas of fallow and formerly intensively farmed land too. This is now managed by the research station, which, for the last 30 years, has been focused on developing the La Gamba Biological Corridor (COBIGA), a green route for species migration.

Using more than 100 different tree species that are being cultivated at a local nursery, the corridor will connect the park and patches of lowland old-growth forest to the upland rainforests of the Fila Cal, a mountain range to the north of the park. It is hoped that the interest created by the digital twin will also encourage further corporate donations to fund the work.

To create the twin, researchers are using Hexagon’s Green Cubes methodology. High-resolution lidar scanners, attached to a plane, first conduct aerial scans, create a 3D model of the rainforest’s vegetation structure and plant diversity that is accurate to within 3 centimeters (1.1 inches). To these data, scientists add terrestrial scans taken at set points below the canopy, which help to ground-truth the quality of the aerial measurements.

To complete the picture, acoustic traps record sounds in the forest, with artificial intelligence (AI) used to break down the recordings by type and number of species. Camera traps collect further data on the forest inhabitants, while soil samples are taken to provide information about the diversity of worms, fungi and bacteria.

“Through repeated measurements, it should be possible to estimate how the forest is growing and how its health and biodiversity are developing,” says Florian Hofhansl, a research scholar at Austria’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, which is a partner in the research.

It can take decades to restore a tropical forest, Hofhansl says, as depleted soils and invasive species often present barriers to natural recovery. However, using this form of assisted restoration could prove to be a cost-effective approach for scaling global reforestation.

The technology, which can be used in forests all over the world, can also act as an early warning system, alerting authorities to land-grabbing, logging, mining, poaching and other activities that can harm the forest.

Hofhansl and his team also plan to use the wealth of information on the diversity of local plant species and vegetation structure to create parameters for another new digital tool called PlantFATE (Plant Functional Acclimation and Trait Evolution).

PlantFATE is designed to unravel the intricate dynamics of how forests grow and respond to environmental change by capturing how plants acclimatize to their local environment. This will allow researchers to predict how tropical ecosystems will react to different climate change scenarios and make recommendations about how to manage species threatened by extinction.

The digital twin will also help researchers to track tree growth, Hofhansl says, and produce a more accurate picture of the carbon stored in the forest. These data can then help companies interested in sponsoring forest conservation by supplying them with a transparent and trusted source of information and allowing them to track their sponsorship over time.

There are also benefits for local communities that rely on the forest for their livelihoods, Hofhansl says. In Costa Rica, local people from the town of La Gamba help to run the COBIGA project, learning how to cultivate tree species that they can harvest. “In this way, we can make sure that while primary forest can be protected, at the same time, local farmers have a sustainable supply of timber,” he adds.

Martin Holmberg is a senior associate professor at Linköping University in Sweden, and much of his work around digital, or smart, forest twins has focused on forestry and managing Scandinavia’s vast coniferous forest. He says that although a forest’s parameters keep changing and creating its digital twin can be complicated, they still allow experts to understand its status quo and future scenarios.

This is why there could also be a role for the digital twins in reduced impact logging, forestry techniques that cause less damage to the surrounding forest and ecosystem. Logging companies are already using twins to plan routes in and out of forests, Holmberg says, when the level of detail offered by a map isn’t good enough. A particular issue here is avoiding forest fires, he explains, and using routes where vehicles are less likely to cause sparks.

However, there are risks, too, Muggah says, with the potential for satellite-based technologies to be used to target vulnerable forests and communities. So while governments are harnessing the geospatial data to uncover crimes such as illegal logging and the building of clandestine airstrips and roads there are also reports that organized crime groups are using the technology and satellite imagery to expand their operations.

Another widespread concern, Muggah adds, is that digital twins are restricted to private use and inaccessible to the wider public, particularly communities that depend on the rainforest.

“Digital twins can potentially reinforce digital divides and unequal access to the dividends generated by these technologies,” he says. As they become more widely used and applied in nature-based solutions, he explains, they could unintentionally exacerbate inequalities and unfairly benefit those with access to the relevant technologies.

To avoid this, training in digital literacy needs to be made available for local communities. “Unless information is made open source … digital twins could unintentionally deepen inequalities,” he adds.

Banner image: Sunrise at the reforestation site at Hacienda El Dorado. Image courtesy of Anton Weissenhofer.

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