Article from the USP Journal on August 9, 2023.

With the participation of researchers from the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture at the University of São Paulo (USP), a team is among the finalists in an international competition aimed at applying biodiversity assessment technologies in tropical forests and environmental conservation. The final stage of this challenge is scheduled for 2024, with a total prize of US$ 10 million at stake.

How to accelerate the cataloging and understanding of biodiversity in tropical forests and create solutions to protect them? The Xprize Rainforest, an international competition initiated four years ago by the Alana Foundation and the XPrize Foundation, will award the best project with $10 million. Out of the 800 projects that entered the competition in 2019, only six have qualified for the final stage, which will take place in 2024 at a location to be determined. Among the six teams, one is Brazilian, the Brazilian Team – three are from the United States, one from Spain, and another from Switzerland. The official announcement of the finalists took place during the 31st International Congress for Conservation Biology, held in Kigali, Rwanda.

The Brazilian Team, headquartered at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (Esalq) at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Piracicaba, includes the participation of over 50 researchers and technical professionals from various universities and research centers in Brazil and abroad. The competition’s main goal is to improve understanding of tropical forest ecosystems for the purpose of preservation. To achieve this, it encourages the application of innovative technologies that enable data collection, interpretation of information, and the application of potential solutions in the analyzed forest.

“We are competing to win this competition. The best team will be decided in the details. We have a head start because most of the team lives and conducts research in the tropical forest. Using the data we generate to propose solutions to keep the forest standing and improve the quality of life for its inhabitants is the direction we will follow in the final next year,” highlights Vinicius Souza, coordinator of the Brazilian Team, professor, and researcher at Esalq, and former director of the National School of Tropical Botany at the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (ENBT/JBRJ).

The Competition

The Brazilian Team in field activities during the XPrize Rainforest – Photo: Brazilian Team’s Disclosure

The semifinals were held in June of this year in Singapore, Asia, with the participation of 13 teams. Each team had 24 hours to test their technologies in designated forest areas. Those selected in the semifinal stage were able to survey extensive forest spaces involving image capture technologies, bioacoustics, and physical sample collection, primarily for DNA identification. With just three drones and one ground robot, the minimal setup of the project developed by the team, they analyzed 60 hectares of forest in detail in 24 hours. Within the 48-hour time limit, the teams presented analytical reports on the species richness present in the assessed area. The Brazilian Team identified over 200 species of plants and animals in that Singaporean forest area.

According to Souza, if victorious in the final, the team intends to allocate the prize towards creating a fund dedicated to research and training focused on the conservation and restoration of the Amazon rainforest and the Atlantic Forest. “It has been years of hard work by the entire team, and we have come this far because everyone has dedicated themselves and given their best. It will be a significant responsibility to represent Brazil, the Southern Hemisphere, and the scientific community of countries that are often considered secondary players in major scientific advancements,” he emphasizes.

The Team

With the support of the Luiz de Queiroz Agrarian Studies Foundation (Fealq), the Brazilian Team is composed of ecologists, robotic engineers, taxonomists, and other professionals and researchers, primarily from Brazil, but also from countries such as France, Colombia, Spain, Portugal, the United States, and Belgium. They hail from various institutions, including USP, São Paulo State University (Unesp), University of Campinas (Unicamp), Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, University of Taubaté (Unitau), Pl@ntNet (Cirad, Inria), National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), École Normale Supérieure (ENS), among others.

“I believe that the joint action of so many institutions, both from Brazil and abroad, in a single team, comprised of some of the leading researchers in the biological, exact, and human sciences, aiming to expedite the biodiversity study process, is unprecedented. In itself, this is already an immense victory,” concludes the coordinator of the Brazilian Team.

The Project

The Brazilian Team’s project integrates existing knowledge and tools such as drones, bioacoustic devices, and portable DNA sequencers, utilizing artificial intelligence and other techniques to develop technologies and a protocol that provide speed and replicability to biodiversity studies in tropical forests. The proposal is for these technologies and protocols, based on scientific methodology and enabling comparisons between different environments, to be highly accurate, low-cost, and user-friendly.

According to Souza, “Throughout the development of our strategies, we have noticed impressive advancements in artificial intelligence tools, image recognition, and DNA analysis, which allow anyone to identify plants and animals quickly and accurately.” The challenge today is that despite having good catalogs of our flora and fauna, there is an urgent need to build databases of photographs and DNA information. “We need to generate data about the DNA of plants, take good photographs, and train people capable of ensuring that the identifications in this database are accurate. Only then will all this technology work well.”