Using Artificial Intelligence to Prevent Deforestation in Madagascar

Clear-cutting forests for valuable timber is a serious problem in Madagascar. The trade of illegally collected and extracted timber is a multibillion-dollar industry motivating the aggressive deforestation. Clear-cutting is known to have significant and long-lasting effect on the carbon content of forest soil. Despite the need to protect forests from harmful practices like clear-cutting, many forest protection organizations are vastly understaffed and underfinanced. In order to address this problem, researchers at the University of Southern California (USC), have teamed up with the nonprofit organization, Alliance Vohoary Gasy in Madagascar. After converting the available resources relating to deforestation to quantified parameters, researchers developed algorithms to allocate resources in order to optimize prevention of deforestation. The algorithm has proven to be more effective than random resource allocation, which many would argue demonstrates its merit as a resource-allocation strategy. In my opinion, this is an excellent start, but comparing the algorithm’s results to the allocations decisions actually made is a more realistic metric. Regardless of if the policies in place are more or less effective than random selection, the goal of the algorithm is to make more effective decisions than the human counterpart, not pure chance.  Hopefully work such as this continues and the rate of deforestation will decrease in the near future.