BarkVisionAI: Novel dataset for rapid tree species identification

By Ashwini Chhatre, Nitesh Saini, Abhijeet Parmar, Pushpendra Rana, Mayank Jain
Nature

Citation

Chhatre, Ashwini., Saini, Nitesh., Parmar, Abhijeet., Rana, Pushpendra., Jain, Mayank. BarkVisionAI: Novel dataset for rapid tree species identification Nature .

Nature

Abstract

Tree species identification and mapping is crucial for forest management, biodiversity conservation, and ecological research. Bark images can be captured easily from the ground-level and can provide large amount of information about the tree species and its health. Yet, existing datasets for tree bark images are often limited in scope, lacking diversity in species representation and temporal attributes. To address these limitations, we present BarkVisionAI, a comprehensive dataset of 167361 tree bark images for 13 species collected from diverse forest types across India. Each image is labeled with species name, device attributes, and timestamp, providing a robust foundation for studying species identification and the variability of bark characteristics. We are providing detailed metadata information about each image, encouraging its use in ecological research, machine learning model training, and environmental monitoring. Benchmarking experiments using standard image classification models demonstrate the dataset’s utility and effectiveness, highlighting its potential as a valuable resource for developing robust, real-world applications in automated tree species identification and environmental change monitoring.

Ashwini Chhatre is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy (BIPP) at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Professor Chhatre is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests broadly centre on the dynamic cross-scale interactions between governance, economic development, and environmental protection. He relocated to India from the US in 2014 to join the faculty at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He spent 13 years in the US, including five in graduate school at Duke University, where he was awarded a PhD in Political Science. In 2006-07, Professor Chhatre became the first Giorgio Ruffolo Post-doctoral Fellow in Sustainability Science at Harvard University, before joining the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Between completing his BA in Economics from the University of Delhi in 1990 and starting his PhD at Duke University, he spent 11 years working in different parts of India, primarily as a community organiser and social activist on issues related to natural resources such as land, forests, and water. A background in Economics, graduate training in Political Science, and a long-standing engagement with scholarship in Geography, Anthropology, Landscape Ecology, and Environmental History ensure that his research is never confined to a single discipline.

Professor Chhatre’s main research interests lie in exploring the intersection of democracy, environment, and development, with a focus on decentralised forest governance, climate change vulnerability and adaptation, and multifunctional agriculture. Over the past 20 years, the scope of his research projects has ranged from household-level to global analysis, consistently bridging research, policy, and practice.

He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of World Development Perspectives (2016-19), served as Senior Editor of Conservation Letters (2009-2014), and has published one book and several articles in leading journals including Science, and PNAS.

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Ashwini Chhatre