Deep learning models map rapid plant species changes from citizen science and remote sensing data

Abstract

Significance Worldwide, plant biodiversity is changing rapidly due to habitat destruction and a warming climate. However, we lack methods at high enough spatial and temporal resolution to detect these changes for individual species. Here, we develop a deep learning-based approach trained with citizen science data that detects thousands of plant species from satellite or aerial imagery. We show how this approach can detect individual species at meter-resolution in California and can detect rapid changes in the makeup of plant communities across both space and time. Our approach provides an efficient way to map plant biodiversity from above that is easily scalable to a global system for monitoring plant biodiversity.