2025: Harnessing AI to Strengthen Nature’s Defense Against Climate Change: Forest Integrity in Cambodia
Nature’s capacity to buffer climate impacts depends on the ecological integrity of ecosystems. High-integrity forests store more carbon, support higher levels of biodiversity, and provide climate refuge for both people and nature. But current global indicators fail to capture ecological integrity in a way that can inform climate adaptation policy. Researchers will develop and test a framework that integrates diverse ecological data streams, including bioacoustics and camera trap data, remote sensing, AI-derived canopy maps, and threat monitoring (e.g., hunting, deforestation) to generate robust, dynamic indicators of ecological integrity, and provide wildlife managers with tools to target protection and monitoring priorities. The framework will be tested in Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia, a biodiversity-rich stronghold managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Investigator: Dena Clink, Cornell Lab of Ornithology