Scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Botanic Garden of Sydney are now utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to understand and mitigate the impact of climate change on plant life. They have trained an AI to analyze data from millions of plant specimens in herbaria collections from around the world. Herbarium collections serve as time capsules of plant specimens, but the vast amount of data makes manual analysis impractical. By bringing herbaria into the digital space through AI, researchers can effectively document the effects of climate change and identify trends that may not be apparent to humans.
The largest herbarium imaging project, undertaken by the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, has resulted in over one million plant samples from the National Herbarium of NSW being transformed into high-resolution digital images. The team constructed an algorithm using a convolutional neural network, or Computer Vision, to detect and measure the size of leaves from scanned herbarium samples. This AI technology allows for the rapid processing and logging of individual characteristics of plant specimens, enabling the analysis of relationships between leaf size and climate.
The machine learning algorithm has provided an acceptable level of accuracy for examining the relationships between leaf size and climate. It has disproven a commonly observed interspecies pattern, revealing that leaf size within a single species does not increase in warmer climates. Factors other than climate have a significant effect on leaf size. This discovery has been made possible due to the vast amount of data analyzed by the AI, providing insights that may have remained hidden without this technology.
The use of AI in fields like botany demonstrates the valuable contributions it can make in understanding and addressing the impacts of climate change on plant life. By leveraging AI technology, scientists can efficiently analyze massive datasets, uncover hidden patterns, and gain a deeper understanding of how plants adapt and evolve in response to environmental changes.