Microsoft says its AI for Good team will work with Manaaki Whenua’s Remote Sensing team to develop models and methods to assess and monitor changes in land use and land cover at scale. The two organisations will use high-resolution satellite imagery, including datasets from the Planetary Computer.
It says those are important elements in assessing carbon stored in New Zealand forests, and improved mapping will help inform decisions and policies for a more sustainable Aotearoa. “The data from this initiative will have practical applications related to understanding changes in carbon sequestration – the process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” says Microsoft’s AI for Good programme’s chief data scientist, Juan Lavista Ferres.
Microsoft says these new mapping approaches can be combined with other carbon models to monitor changes in carbon, helping policymakers, urban planners, and the general community consider how their land use affects New Zealand’s climate change goals.
Manaaki Whenua chief scientist Fiona Carswell says Aotearoa New Zealand has ambitious goals to address climate change and meeting those goals will require many partnerships and collaborations. “This project with Microsoft is a strong example of working together to enrich our understanding of te taiao (our environment) today and for our future,” she says.
Source: IT Brief NZ
.jpg)
Share this Post
