fbpx Leafsnap | Science in the net
  1. Name that leaf
  2. Revisions
  3. Leafsnap

Leafsnap

di Emanuela Clavarino
Pubblicato il 23/09/2012Read time: 1 min
Botany
School

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX23TuwP0tI]

Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution are working on visual recognition software to help identify species from photographs. Leafsnap is the first in a series of electronic field guides being developed to demonstrate this new technology. This free mobile app helps identify tree species from photographs of their leaves and contains beautiful high-resolution images of their flowers, fruit, petiole, seeds, and bark. Leafsnap currently includes the trees of the Northeast and will soon grow to cover the trees of the entire continental United States.
Leafsnap turns users into citizen scientists, automatically sharing images, species identifications, and geo-coded stamps of species locations with a community of scientists who will use the stream of data to map and monitor the ebb and flow of flora nationwide.
The Leafsnap family of electronic field guides aims to leverage digital applications and mobile devices to build an ever-greater awareness of and appreciation for biodiversity. Click on "Species" above to browse Leafsnap’s gallery of species.
The genesis of Leafsnap was the realization that many techniques used for face recognition developed by Professor Peter Belhumeur and Professor David Jacobs, of the Computer Science departments of Columbia University and the University of Maryland, respectively, could be applied to automatic species identification.
Professors Jacobs and Belhumeur approached Dr. John Kress, Chief Botanist at the Smithsonian, to start a collaborative effort for designing and building such a system for plant species. Columbia and the University of Maryland designed and implemented the visual recognition system used for automatic identification. In addition, Columbia University designed and wrote the iPhone, iPad, and Android apps, the leafsnap.com website, and wrote the code that powers the recognition servers. The Smithsonian was instrumental in collecting the datasets of leaf species and supervising the curation efforts throughout the course of the project. As part of this effort, the Smithsonian contracted the not-for-profit nature photography group Finding Species, which collected and photographed the high-quality photos available in the apps and the website.
For press inquiries, please email [email protected].

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCpR4JTEy4c]

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k02C7p7mQ_c]

leafsnap leafsnap leafsnap leafsnap


Scienza in rete è un giornale senza pubblicità e aperto a tutti per garantire l’indipendenza dell’informazione e il diritto universale alla cittadinanza scientifica. Contribuisci a dar voce alla ricerca sostenendo Scienza in rete. In questo modo, potrai entrare a far parte della nostra comunità e condividere il nostro percorso. Clicca sul pulsante e scegli liberamente quanto donare! Anche una piccola somma è importante. Se vuoi fare una donazione ricorrente, ci consenti di programmare meglio il nostro lavoro e resti comunque libero di interromperla quando credi.


prossimo articolo

Cuba: Now it’s time to go

di Maurizio Bonati
Pubblicato il 23/03/2026
drawing of the Cuban flag on a peeling wall

The President of the United States has already announced that his next target will be Cuba, one way or another. The island has in any case been subjected to a fierce embargo for 64 years, with dramatic consequences for the health of its inhabitants. The tightening of recent times is making it difficult to maintain even those capacities to produce drugs and vaccines that have so far upheld the right to health. Until when?

 

There is an ongoing emergency; has been going on for a long time and therefore the situation is very serious and uncertain and there is always someone who tries to take advantage of it, even in an unfair way.