Google DeepMind releases ForTy global 10-meter map of forest types

Google DeepMind, Google Research, the World Resources Institute and IIASA release Forest Typology (ForTy) 2020, a 10-meter global map that classifies land into six forest and land-use types, along with an early time series covering 2017 to 2025 that tracks changes such as natural forests replaced by plantations or farms. The researchers say ForTy picked the right forest type 90% of the time and separated forest from non-forest land 95% of the time in validation against more than 9,000 sites. A later report from The Decoder, citing an expert check, gives 90.2% overall accuracy but says the map identified only about half of tree crops and planted forests and 60% of plantations.

The map and time series are freely available on Google Earth Engine under an open license, and the map is described in Scientific Data. The authors present it as a baseline for the EU's deforestation regulation, and The Decoder reports that the code is released in the GeeFlow and JEO repositories.