Tradition meets AI as Leicester scientists help tackle Amazonian biodiversity crisis

Traditional Amazonian communities will be using artificial intelligence to help scientists monitor biodiversity in the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

The scientists are developing an AI-driven digital toolkit to enable traditional Amazonian communities to monitor and maintain socio-biodiversity in the Amazon region, as well as facilitate their engagement with the bioeconomy. 

The University of Leicester’s School of Geography, Geology and the Environment and Institute of Environmental Futures have launched a major new research initiative aimed at tackling the growing social-biodiversity and climate challenges facing the Amazon rainforest. Social biodiversity describes the importance of people, particularly traditional communities, to the maintenance of an ecosystem.

Led by Dr Ben Coles and bringing together an international and interdisciplinary team of researchers from Brazil and the UK, the £950,000 project is supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and is part the UKRI-CNPq Amazon+10 programme. It seeks to reshape how conservation and sustainable development are approached in one of the world’s most vital ecosystems. 

Around 70 million people live in the Amazon region, with around 40% making their living in/through the forest and the rural environment. Traditional communities typically make their livings through forest resources, rather than cutting the forest for mechanised agriculture or ranching, and tend to have extremely intimate knowledges of their territories' flora and fauna, as well as knowledges of their 'work' as ecosystems. 

Carried out in nine communities within three states in the Legal Amazon: Pará, Amazonas and Maranhão, researchers will collaborate with traditional Amazonian communities with the aim of developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that inventories traditional knowledges in these territories. The objectives for the project are to train communities in the digital and AI-monitoring of biodiversity in their territories; for this digital tool to record and scientifically validate traditional practices and knowledge of biodiversity and then to relate them to globally available scientific databases. The aim is to enable these communities to maintain control over their knowledge and consequently territories. As well as working closely with traditional communities, the project will involve NGOs and policy makers to ensure that outcomes support justice, equity, and long-term environmental stewardship.

The toolkit will enable traditional communities to track and monitor biodiversity by providing their own knowledges and understandings of flora and fauna, and ecosystem dynamics. The AI system underneath the toolkit will map this onto scientific databases and fed into conservation efforts. This catalogue of knowledge will enable these communities to engage with policymakers, as well as providing those communities with information to help them engage with the market for their work on their own terms.

Dr Coles will work with Professor Nirvia Ravena at Federal University of Para, and collaborators from nine other universities and institutions in Brazil, as part of the project, entitled ‘Participatory monitoring of traditional territories: digital platform for co-production of data on socio-biodiversity in Amazonian areas’.

As the Amazon faces unprecedented threats from deforestation, climate change, and political conflict, this project offers a timely and innovative approach to promoting resilience and transformation in the region.

Dr Ben Coles from the University of Leicester School of Geography, Geology and the Environment said: “The Amazon’s a big place. This exciting project is a crucial step towards understanding the region’s complex social and ecological dynamics on the ground.

“We’re not only studying social-biodiversity but hoping to enable traditional communities in the region to maintain control over their resources and territories, which are vital to region’s ecological as well as social sustainability. It's about making science more responsive and relevant to the people who live in, and depend on, the forest, as well as saving the Amazon for the future.”

• The project is part of UKRI-CNPq Amazon+10 initiative to environmental challenges and will run until mid-2028.