Google Deepmind creates a global map of forests with satellite data and AI

What happened

Google Deepmind and the World Resources Institute have released ForTy, a global map that classifies forests and other land into six categories, including primary forest, plantations, and tree crops. The map could help track deforestation under EU rules, but it identifies only about half of planted forests and tree-crop areas, and 60% of plantations. Google is an Internet and software company based in Mountain View.

The map achieved 90.2% overall accuracy and outperformed European Commission maps on the same test data, but identified only about half of tree crops and planted forests and 60% of plantations. The system operates with AlphaEarth Foundations and multiple image-recognition stages to distinguish forest types by growth and harvest cycles, not appearance alone.

Google Deepmind and the World Resources Institute have developed ForTy, an AI map that distinguishes primary forests, timber plantations, and tree crop farms worldwide. Satellite maps usually show whether trees grow in a given area without identifying the forest or crop type.

ForTy, short for Forest Typology, goes further by assigning the world's land area in 2020 to 6 classes at 10-meter resolution. These cover primary forest, naturally regenerating forest, planted forest, plantation forest, tree crops such as oil palm, rubber, or cocoa, and other land.

The authors say ForTy is the first global map of its kind. Earlier datasets, including one from the European Commission, cover only parts of the world.

EU deforestation rules need a reliable 2020 reference point The main driver behind the project is the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) , which prohibits goods linked to forests cleared or degraded after December 31, 2020, including goods produced after primary forest was converted to a plantation. Oil palm and cocoa farms count as agricultural land, so companies assessing supply chain risks need to know how a site was used in 2020.