Accurately identify vegetation species using one or multiple photos in the field, powered by AI.
This feature is available in Ecobot for Wetlands within the Collector app.
To see how it works and follow along with step-by-step instructions, check out this video overview of the AI tool.
To Use the AI Vegetation Lookup tool:
- When you are in your wetland Survey, navigate to vegetation > then tap a species. There will be three blocks at the top where you can navigate to the AI tool.
- Immediately take a photo of the species you want to ID.
- Look up a photo in your device's photo gallery to upload and ID.
- Go into our lookup vegetation tool to see recently used species, or take a new photo of the plant you want to ID.
2. Snap a photo of the plant you'd like to ID
- Choose whether you want to add one photo or multiple photos.
- Scroll through the photos to see more images of the plant
- "Tap to view more" to see other suggestions with their confidence levels
3. Upload a photo from your photo gallery on your device
- This will follow the process but instead of taking the picture you are uploading it to our AI tool
4. Go into our lookup vegetation tool to see recently used veg, search for a species, or take a photo for our AI tool there.
5. Multiple photo upload
- Select "Multiple"
- Take up to 5 photos of the species you would like to identify
- Categorize them by auto, bark, leaf, or flower (auto will categorize them for you)
- Continue, and take a look at suggestions and confidence level!
Does submitting multiple photos of the same plant improve identification?
Yes, submitting up to five images of the same individual plant can significantly improve identification accuracy—even if the photos show similar views (like several flowers or leaves). Some views, however, are more informative than others. For best results, prioritize your photos in this order of usefulness: flower, fruit, leaf, whole plant, and bark.
While a complete set of different views isn’t required, it’s often better to submit multiple images of the most distinctive parts—typically flowers and fruits. These provide the most useful information for accurate identification.
Note: Bark and leaf images are less informative. Bark should mainly be used when no other parts are available (e.g., winter photos of deciduous trees), and leaves are generally less useful than flowers or fruits.
How does Ecobot Collector handle images?
Ecobot’s plant identification algorithm automatically detects and evaluates the view type of each image. You don’t need to label the image types manually or worry about submitting a perfect mix—the system does the work for you.
More information around our vegetation ID tool
- You can record the species even if it isn't in the NWPL.
- You can still manually input an indicator status.
Sources
Ecobot Collector is leveraging the power of a robust dataset of professionally confirmed species.