An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Predict Gross Primary Productivity in the Forests of South Korea Using Satellite Remote Sensing Data

Many process-based models for carbon flux predictions have faced a wide range of uncertainty issues. The complex interactions between the atmosphere and the forest ecosystems can lead to uncertainties in the model result. On the other hand, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, which are novel methods to resolve complex and nonlinear problems, have shown a possibility for forest ecological applications. This study is the first step to present an objective comparison between multiple AI models for the daily forest gross primary productivity (GPP) prediction using satellite remote sensing data. We built the AI models such as support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), artificial neural network (ANN), and deep neural network (DNN) using in-situ observations from an eddy covariance (EC) flux tower and satellite remote sensing data such as albedo, aerosol, temperature, and vegetation index. We focused on the Gwangneung site from the Korea Regional Flux Network (KoFlux) in South Korea, 2006–2015. As a result, the DNN model outperformed the other three models through an intensive hyperparameter optimization, with the correlation coefficient (CC) of 0.93 and the mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.68 g m−2 d−1 in a 10-fold blind test. We showed that the DNN model also performed well under conditions of cold waves, heavy rain, and an autumnal heatwave. As future work, a comprehensive comparison with the result of process-based models will be necessary using a more extensive EC database from various forest ecosystems.