Plant Ecology in the Age of Robots

Climate change and biodiversity loss are the two most pressing environmental challenges of our time. Nature-based solutions that are backed by science need to be designed and implemented urgently, and at scale. As scientists who study plant species distributions across space and time, plant ecologists have much to bring to the table. Plants power the biosphere, and each of the world’s ~400,000 plant species does so in its own way. As such, actionable data about plant biodiversityーwhich plant species grow where, both now and in a warmer futureーare in high demand. However, acquisition of plant biodiversity data remains a human-powered process that is slow and limited to small localities (roughly 10–100 m2 day-1 ecologist-1), whereas land management decisions often must be made quickly and involve surfaces millions of times larger. Could robots come to the rescue? If so, what should they look like, and how exactly could they help? Answering these questions requires us to identify the physical and mental tasks performed by plant ecologists, and determine which ones could be automated. I will show that these robots already exist, cost relatively little and require minimal training to be used effectively. Their transformative potential lies in their ability to harness collective knowledge about the world’s flora, which is beyond the reach of the human brain. Robots will not be the solution to our environmental problems. However, they can accelerate discovery and free us from repetitive tasks so we can focus our mental energy on finding creative, science-based solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss.

Click or tap the speaker's name to see their biography and a short Q&A with their thoughts about their career and the field of ecology.