Abstract

Forest management and regulation are critical for maintaining biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and ensuring the sustainable provision of ecosystem services. Traditional methods of forest management often face challenges related to data collection, analysis, and decision-making, particularly in the context of increasingly complex environmental and socio-economic factors. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers promising solutions to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and adaptability in these domains. This paper provides a critical analysis of the contributions of AI in forest management and regulation. It examines the various AI techniques applied to forest inventory, monitoring, prediction, and decision support, highlighting their strengths and limitations. Furthermore, it discusses the challenges and opportunities associated with the integration of AI into existing forest management frameworks, including data availability, algorithm transparency, and stakeholder engagement, while emphasizing necessary requirements of forest regulation. By providing a comprehensive overview of the current state and future potential of AI in forestry, this paper aims to inform researchers, practitioners, and policymakers about the transformative role of AI in promoting sustainable forest management and effective regulation.