Project title: MozaicAI – AI-Powered Remote Surveys – Remote Plant Diversity Surveys
Project duration: 2023-2026
Project budget (IBRC Cluj): 37720 Euro
Projec partners: The project is coordinated by Mozaic Earth (UK). The partners involved in the project are: Institute of Biological Research Cluj (IBRC), Fundația ADEPT Transilvania and rePLANET (UK).
Project links:
https://www.replanet.org.uk/project/quantifying-biodiversity-gains
Context:
This project aims to empower one billion people worldwide to become active custodians of our planet’s biodiversity. We achieve this by creating a powerful synergy between expert researchers, local communities, and land users through an innovative, technology-driven platform. The model enables community contributors to perform crucial “ground-truthing” using only their smartphones. The platform transforms simple inputs—such as pictures of vegetation quadrats or videos taken while walking a plot—into powerful analytical tools. This includes generating detailed 3D models of plant life and enabling immersive, drone-like virtual explorations of entire sites. This rich, citizen-sourced data is then efficiently streamed to a network of botanical and ecological experts for rapid validation. This approach makes large-scale biodiversity monitoring practical and economical, while also creating a system to reward local volunteers for their valuable contributions. The resulting global Biodiversity Dataset will provide invaluable insights for conservation and create new opportunities that enhance local livelihoods. The analytical workflow is streamlined and rigorous. Botanical experts remotely analyze high-resolution digital imagery of each quadrat, tasked with identifying and enumerating plant species within a standardized timeframe (e.g., three minutes). Based on the clarity of visible plant parts, they record species richness and classify flora to the most precise taxonomic level possible, from genus to species.
Objective of the IBRC Team:
- Pilot Project (2023): Transylvania Exploratory Pilot Project for Biodiversity Monitoring at Scale. Testing emerging mobile technologies. The pilot project in Transylvania is involving researchers from IBRC, farmers and community representatives in Sighisoara-Târnava Mare area. Link to pdf document: Pilot_Study_Rap_2023.pdf
- Remote assessment of plant diversity across sites in various environments situated in the UK and Romania (2024). A total of 5878 vegetation quadrats is analyzed in order to identity the taxonomical identity by the IBRC researchers using the Mozaic Earth Platform.
- Remote assessment of plant diversity across sites in various environments situated in the UK and Romania (2025-2026). A total of 7770 vegetation quadrats from UK and 750 validation vegetation quadrats from Romania are analyzed in order to identity the taxonomical identity by the IBRC researchers using the Mozaic Earth Platform.
- The Mozaic Earth mobile app interface used to collect plant photo quadrats (left) and the digital platform interface used by remote botanists to analyse the plant photo quadrats captured in the field (right)
2. Project Site and Quadrats from UK
3. Quadrats and plant species
3. Quadrats and plant species
Project Team at IBRC:
- Dr. Anamaria Roman (project director at IBRC)
- Dr. Tudor Ursu
- Dr. Thomas Kuhn
- Dr. Hurdu Bogdan
- Research Assistant: PhD Student Zsombor Miholcsa
- Research Assistant: Șandor Dorottya-Mária