Google releases AI map distinguishing forest types worldwide
Google and research partners released Forest Typology 2020 on 2026-10-22, alongside an early annual series covering 2017–2025. The team says the map distinguishes forest types at 10-meter resolution.
Google DeepMind and Google Research, working with the World Resources Institute and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, announced Forest Typology (ForTy) 2020 on 2026-10-22. The global map separates land into 6 forest and land-use categories at 10-meter resolution.
The categories distinguish primary, naturally regenerating, planted and plantation forests, alongside tree crops and agroforestry, and other land. The team says this reveals differences that maps showing only tree cover can miss, including natural forest converted into plantations.
The model uses AlphaEarth Foundations satellite-data embeddings and about 1.7 million labeled locations. The partners report that validation against more than 9,000 randomly selected sites found 90% accuracy for forest type and 95% for distinguishing forest from non-forest land.
An early-release annual series covers 2017–2025 and tracks changes in forest type. The team says both datasets are freely available through Google Earth Engine under an open license; the time series remains subject to further improvement.