Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to protect and restore Ireland’s peatlands are being explored in a new €200,000 project called AI2Peat.

This project aims to address challenges around monitoring remote peatlands and estimate the carbon storage capacity of individual habitats.

It is a collaboration between CeADAR, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and iCRAG.

CeADAR is Ireland’s centre for applied artificial intelligence (AI) and iCRAG is Science Foundation Ireland's research centre in applied geosciences.

Emerging technologies

There are a total of 26 teams competing in the national challenge fund competition to investigate how emerging digital technologies can be used to help Ireland achieve its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. AI2Peat is one of the 26.

Led by director of applied research at CeADAR Dr Oisín Boydell and Dr Eoghan Holohan of iCRAG, AI2Peat also aims to use data gathered by drones, satellites and citizen scientists to develop an all-Ireland mapping solution to identify peatland areas under threat from erosion, exploitation and climate change, and to identify areas of high conservation value.

Ireland’s peatlands cover around 17% of the land surface area of the country.

AI2Peat is now in the six-month concept stage of the national challenge fund project, in which organisers receive €50,000 in funding to explore the problem.

Seed phase

This is to be followed by the seed phase, in which teams will receive €150,000 to engage experts, local stakeholders and communities on the ground to gauge the applicability of their proposed solutions.

In the final stage, 10 teams are selected from the group of 26 to further develop their projects and are awarded an additional €500,000. Following that, the best project is selected by a judging panel, with the winner receiving further funding of €1m.

'Important natural ecosystem'

“Peatlands are a very important natural ecosystem in Ireland. The specific purpose of AI2Peat is to protect and monitor these habitats, but our goal is to influence policy around environmental protection, biodiversity and climate change," Dr Boydell said.

He added that a lot of data has been collected from drone surveys, satellites, earth observation and on-the-ground measurements supported by citizen scientists.

"Artificial intelligence technology can give us insights into the complex dynamics that are degrading our peatlands and represents an exciting new solution to the preservation of the environment for humans and animals alike," he said.

The majority of these peatlands, according senior scientist at the NPWS Dr Shane Regan, are in poor condition and are large sources of carbon emissions.

"Improvements in the ways we can remotely detect high-quality areas for protection and areas that can potentially be restored with intervention measures will be enormously beneficial and help direct financial resources to areas where they are most needed," he said.

Dr Eoghan Holohan added that the new innovations should advance Irish climate action and help to safeguard these national assets for future generations.