Google announced an agreement with different Brazilian organizations to develop an application for mobile devices that, through the “fingerprint of trees”, will allow track the wood extracted from the Amazon and identify the one that was felled illegally.
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The Digitales de la Floresta project foresees a partnership with the environmental organization The Nature Conservancy (TNC)which has already begun to set up a database with data to identify different trees in the Amazon and their regions of origin, as well as with the University of Sao Paulo (USP), the Institute for Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora) and the technology firm Trase .
The initiative will leverage artificial intelligence tools from Google and biochemical data from trees, specifically their isotopes, to to be able to identify the origin of the wood extracted from the Amazon and marketed both in Brazil and abroad.
According to the entities involved, when the system is operational and it is possible to prevent illegal logging, will have the capacity to reduce Brazil’s polluting gas emissions by 178 million tonsa volume that is equivalent to 13% of the reduction goal with which the Brazilian Government committed itself until 2030 in the agreements on climate change.
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This is because most of Brazil’s emissions are caused by deforestation in the Amazon. According to Google, the ultimate goal of the project is to have an intelligence platform, either an application or a web tool, that allows authorities, prosecutors and even the final consumer to identify whether wood from the Amazon was illegally extracted.
According to TNT, cAbout 40% of the wood from the Amazon traded by Brazil is extracted from preservation areas, as environmental and indigenous reserves. The organization affirms that companies around the world already have tools that allow them to trace the origin of Brazilian products such as soybeans and meat, and determine if they come from illegal activities in the Amazon, but that so far there is nothing reliable that allows certifying the origin of the wood.
TNT established that it is possible to use the chemical composition and isotopes (carbon, oxygen and nitrogen) of trees to safely identify their area of origin.
(See: The Samsung app that lets you turn your iPhone into a Galaxy.)
“In each region, the composition of rainwater and soil has isotopes with specific characteristics and as the trees absorb them, they end up presenting an isotopic composition similar to the place where it grows. It’s kind of a unique fingerprint.”explained the director of TNC Brazil, Frineia Rezende, to EFE.
The TNC and USP have already begun the process of identifying the isotopes of 250 different tree samples from twenty regions in the Amazon, especially the most commercial ones.
EFE
