Perseus Project Awarded Grant

Purdue University and three partner organizations including the U.S. Forest Service have been awarded a $10 million grant for their Perseus project intended to provide a range of digital tools to assist with management of forests in the Eastern and Northern U.S.

The effort is led by Professor Songlin Fei, the Dean’s Chair of Remote Sensing at Purdue. The partner institutions, including the University of Georgia and the University of Maine, will “apply digital tools and artificial intelligence to a variety of areas and forest types”, according to the Purdue announcement.

Perseus is an outgrowth of Purdue’s Center for Digital Forestry, launched as one of five key initiatives of the university in 2021. The center envisions use of a range of tools, including satellite imaging, Lidar, and artificial intelligence in forest management.

The project is intended to assist five million small private landowners in the Eastern and Central United States balance the goals of carbon retention and forests with overall good forest management. “You could manage the same patch of forest for timber, carbon, wildlife or also for something else. Opportunities come and go,” Fei said.

View the full Purdue announcement at: https://www.purdue.edu/newsroo...