nAlture - Capital Accounting for North Rhine-Westphalia’s Carbon Neutrality

The nAIture Capital Accounting project is developing an AI-powered tool to assess the value of natural capital in North Rhine-Westphalia. The goal is to use data to capture and forecast ecological characteristics and ecosystem services such as CO₂ sequestration, biodiversity, and vegetation growth and make this information usable for planning and practical applications.
Based on standardized environmental, vegetation, and climate data, two deep learning models are being developed: one for automated image segmentation and species recognition, and another for predicting vegetation growth and ecosystem services. These components form the basis of the new assessment method “nAIture Capital Accounting,” which will be tested in pilot regions, compared with established approaches such as i-Tree and InVEST, and subsequently made available via an online platform — with the aim of being transferable and replicable to other regions.

The project is being carried out by the LAND Research Lab in collaboration with the University of Wuppertal. While LAND is responsible for planning integration, data preparation, and methodological design, the University of Wuppertal is developing the deep learning models.