To protect Costa Rica's forest, a "digital twin" is needed

3D scans of the rainforest create a digital twin useful for developing targeted assisted reforestation interventions.

Costa Rica, Piedras Blancas National Park, southern region of Puntarenas:here, in the midst of thick vegetation is the La Gamba station, a research facility managed byUniversity of Vienna with the collaboration ofInternational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Austrian who, through the use of the most up-to-date digital technologies provided by the Swedish company Hexagon, aims to build a 3D model of the forest.In practice, a perfect digital twin, which allows scientists to know and understand the area in the smallest detail, and then proceed with protection and reforestation actions in a targeted and effective way.

Digital twins are not new

This use of 3D technology is nothing new.Digital twins are already exploited for oil platforms and industrial sites, i.e. immobile structures, whose scans allow you to operate with greater safety.Creating a digital twin of a forest – never the same, constantly growing and moving – is a more complex, yet important activity for researchers, communities and even for companies that decide to finance restoration activities , long-term monitoring and protection of flora and fauna.

Among the initiatives already undertaken there is, for example, the one that brought together the Brazilian national space agency, the University of Sao Paulo and the network of NGOs MapBiomas to periodically monitor i changes in the Amazon landscape Brazilian.

How a twin is born in 3D

The research center used the Green cubes methodology Hexagon, which primarily involves the use of Lidar scanner high resolution placed on an airplane to obtain scans from above.With this system, 3D models of the forest structure are obtained with an accuracy of 3 cm.Everything is then perfected thanks to scans from the ground, at acoustic traps for recording sounds, at camera traps and ai soil samples which provide information on worms, fungi and bacteria present.Repeated scans then allow us to "measure" the growth of the forest, its health and its richness biodiversity.

What is the Piedras Blancas twin for?

The creation of a twin of Piedras Blancas has the objective in particular of preserving the very rich biodiversity of the area.The park, created in 1991, is large 14 thousand hectares, hosts more than 200 species of trees as well as animals whose populations are decreasing (even if they are not yet at risk of extinction), such as jaguars, ocelots and spectacled caimans.

In particular, the University of Vienna operates in an area purchased in 2010 by the NGO Regenwald der Österreicher – literally, The Forest of the Austrians – 4 thousand hectares wide and then donated to the Costa Rican authorities.Among the purchased land there is also a "buffer" area, which aims to protect the park from deforestation for banana and oil palm plantations.The aim of the research station, which has been operating in the park for thirty years, is to develop the La Gamba biological corridor (Cobiga), a green path for species migration:it will be made up of 100 different species of trees grown in a local nursery and will connect the Fila Cal mountain range in the north, the park and the lowland forests.

What if the "evil twins" also existed?

The benefits of the birth of a digital twin for a forest are therefore many.We go to them targeted protection interventions, to those of assisted reforestation, from the acquisition of environmental data to understand how plants adapt to climate change, to the analysis of the movements of possible criminal groups, which can thus be blocked in the bud.

Yet researchers also have some concerns.The same 3D technologies can be used by them criminals to create “evil twins” and expand their operations.Or we fear that they will be born "digital inequalities” between private individuals who own the technologies and local communities, who risk not having access to them.For La Gamba scientists the solution is clear:proceed with thedigital literacy of communities who depend on the forest and thus avoid inadvertent social injustices.