In your opinion, can the new technologies of Industry 4.0, including above all artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning applied in combination with large sets of data, information and knowledge collected and processed on Big Data Analytics platforms help to design a biodiverse forest in forest management?

Under the outdated monoculture model of industrially growing mainly one tree species, which has been in use for hundreds of years, biodiversity levels were deliberately reduced. The result was that the forest monoculture was more susceptible to parasitic attacks, generating a massive breeding of a particular species of parasitic insects or other types of parasitic living organisms feeding on a particular tree species. In addition, forest monocultures formed mainly or exclusively from a single tree species were an excellent habitat for viruses, bacteria and fungi thriving in specific monoculture formations. In some countries, forest monocultures that had been in use for many years formed the forest according to an industrial formula of growing only certain tree species, mainly coniferous species such as Scots pine or Norway spruce. Monocultures of one or two coniferous species were mainly used because these species usually grow faster than deciduous trees. However, coniferous species, due to the high level of resin contained in their trunks and branches, are exposed to a higher risk of forest fires, in addition to fires that spread quickly and are more difficult to extinguish. Consequently, if instead of a monoculture of coniferous forest, a reconstituted forest composed of many species of deciduous and coniferous trees were used, then the moisture level of the litter would be higher and its susceptibility to the development of fires would be lower.

Consequently, the level of risk of fire occurrence and development in a multispecies forest, which would also include deciduous trees, would be lower than in a coniferous monoculture operated according to an industrial timber production model. In addition, a multi-species coniferous forest would be characterised by a many times higher level of biodiversity than a monoculture, which would also result in the nesting, occurrence and feeding of many plant and animal species that have been or are currently classified as threatened with extinction.

Among the many different determinants of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, limiting the greenhouse effect, the progressive process of global warming and increasing the sustainability of civilisation, there is a need to urgently put an end to the processes of forest deforestation, i.e. the process that is still taking place on most continents, and to replace this process, which is destructive to the climate, the biosphere and humanity, with a process of aforestation by restoring the most biodiverse forest cover possible in areas degraded by civilisation. Forests should be restored first and foremost in various types of civilisationally degraded areas, i.e. post-industrial areas, post-mining areas, areas with sterilised soil through the use of unsustainable industrial agriculture, monoculture cultivation of crops.

Until recently, it has not been easy to plan and manage such highly biodiverse and natural forest ecosystems in a particular area because of the vast amount of data and knowledge on the ecology of many species of flora, fauna, fungi and micro-organisms that would have to be taken into account in such planning, designing, managing and restoring biodiverse forest ecosystems on a sustainable basis.

However, in the current era of the fourth technological revolution, in the era of the rapidly cheapening new technologies of Industry 4.0, the increasingly widespread applicability of such technologies as Big Data Analytics, cloud computing, Internet of Things, robotics, satellite analytics, machine learning, deep learning, artificial intelligence, the possibilities for planning, design, management and restoration of biodiverse forest ecosystems taking into account sustainability, high-scale biodiversity and the restoration of natural forest swamps that previously existed in the area before the emergence of man are gradually and rapidly increasing. In view of the above, artificial intelligence technology, which has been developing particularly rapidly in recent years, may prove helpful in the process of improving the planning, design, management and restoration of forests taking into account a high scale of sustainability, biodiversity and naturalness, i.e. the restoration of natural biodiverse forest ecosystems that existed centuries ago in a specific area.

Considering how this should be a complex, multifaceted process of planning, designing, management and restoration of biodiverse forest ecosystems, which aims to restore highly sustainable, natural biodiverse forest ecosystems, the application in this process of new generations of Industry 4.0 technologies, including, above all, artificial intelligence based on large sets of data, information and knowledge on many different aspects of nature, ecology, climate, civilisation, etc. collected and processed on Big Data Analytics platforms can be of great help.

I will write more about this in my book, which I am currently writing. I would like to invite you to join me in scientific cooperation on this issue.

Counting on your opinions, on getting to know your personal opinion, on an honest approach to the discussion of scientific issues and not on ready-made answers generated in ChatGPT, I deliberately used the phrase "in your opinion" in the question.

In view of the above, I address the following question to the esteemed community of scientists and researchers:

In your opinion, can the new technologies of Industry 4.0, including above all artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning applied in combination with large sets of data, information and knowledge collected and processed on Big Data Analytics platforms help to design a biodiverse forest in forest management?

Can artificial intelligence and Big Data Analytics help in the design of a biodiverse forest within forest management?

And what is your opinion on this?

What is your opinion on this subject?

Please respond,

I invite you all to discuss,

Thank you very much,

Best regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz