Plant Functional Ecology Lab

To program these automatic drone missions: 💻 github.com/traitlab/harpia

🌳🚁 Revolutionary drone workflow captures ultra-HD photos of tropical tree canopies! Our new method captures 300 trees/day from 6m above, helping botanists ID species that are impossible to see from the forest floor. 📄 doi.org/10.1101/2025.0…

Our workflow in action can be seen here: 🎞️youtube.com/watch?v=80goME…

We’re releasing SelvaBox, the largest tropical tree detection dataset from drone imagery. Our models trained on SelvaBox achieve competitive zero-shot detection performance on unseen tropical tree crown datasets, matching or exceeding competing methods. arxiv.org/abs/2507.00170

To win #XPRIZERainforest we developed an automatic workflow to acquire close-up photos of tropical trees to support biodiversity monitoring. Here’s what it looks like it action at @USFQTiputini youtu.be/80goMEifpc4?fe…

👏Congratulations to the Limelight Rainforest team for winning the #XPRIZERainforest competition in Brazil with the support of IVADO! Read more: ivado.ca/en/2024/12/16/… #XPRIZE #Biodiversity #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ClimateChange #TropicalForest

👏Félicitations à l’équipe Limelight Rainforest qui a remporté la compétition #XPRIZERainforest au Brésil grâce au soutien d'IVADO! En savoir plus : ivado.ca/2024/12/16/xpr… #XPRIZE #Biodiversité #IA #IntelligenceArtificielle #ChangementsClimatiques #Innovation #ForetsTropicales

We're working on Barro Colorado Island with @HMullerLandau's team to refine our winning #XPRIZERainforest canopy tree mapping solution. We're now confident enough in our workflow to the drone move closer to trees to take even better photos. #BioCLIP correctly ID'ed that one!

🙏 Thanks also to @DaoudPiracha Vincent Le Falher @Rivasecologyecu the ZF-2 crew and everyone in @traitlab who labelled trees!

🥇We’re thrilled to announce that our @LimelightRF team has won the #XPRIZERainforest competition! 🏆 🌳We have developed the canopy tree mapping solution using drone imagery and AI 🌴 Follow 🧵below for details!

💰Thanks to @institutoalana who generously funded this @XPRIZE rainforest competition and @IVADO_QC who provided financial support for the finals.

🙏 All of this was made possible by an incredibly talented team led by @etnlalib. Huge shout-out to @HugoBaudchon @antoine3563! Thanks also to @cjpal @ArthurOuaknine @MelisandeTeng @RubiscoAI @OutreachRobotic @thomas_walla @johannavarner and many others...

So happy to announce that our team @LimelightRF won the #XPRIZERainforest competition! We delivered a canopy tree mapping solution using drones and AI that can transform tropical forest biodiversity monitoring. Thanks @IVADO_Qc for the support.

We're delighted to announce that our @LimelightRF team made it on the podium of #XPRIZERainforest! Regardless of the result (🥇🥈or🥉???), we're very proud of @traitlab's contribution to @LimelightRF through our innovative canopy tree mapping solution🌳Stay tuned for more!

In this new study from our lab, @myriam_cloutier shows that segmentation of temperate trees from drone imagery works best at the onset of autumn when leaves start of deciduous trees start to change color. authors.elsevier.com/c/1jMU27qzT3EBA