Google DeepMind and WRI release ForTy, a global 10-meter map of forest types

Google DeepMind and Google Research, with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), released Forest Typology (ForTy) 2020 on Oct. 22: a global map that sorts every 10-by-10-meter patch of land into six classes (primary, naturally regenerating, planted and plantation forest, tree crops such as oil palm, rubber and cocoa, and other land) as a 2020 reference point for the EU’s deforestation-free products regulation, DeepMind said. In the peer-reviewed paper in Scientific Data, the six-class map agreed with expert labels at 90.2% of 8,190 randomly chosen validation sites and separated forest from non-forest at 95.5%. The map, its classification layer and the validation dataset are free to download, and DeepMind also shared an early 2017–2025 time series showing what replaced lost forest.