Vermont artist uses AI to examine damaged leaves

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Spongy moths, an invasive species introduced into the U.S. in the late 1800′s. Most years, a fungus which is their natural predator, prevents their outbreaks. But in 2021 and 2022, a drought allowed their population to flourish, and the caterpillars snacked on their favorite treat: foliage. Jennifer Karson and her students started those collecting leaves, and out of it came the damaged leaf data set.

“I’ve had people who find beauty in these leaves, and essentially what we’re looking at is a conflict between the caterpillars and the trees that human behavior played a big role in creating that conflict.” said Jennifer Karson

The data set is made up by what Karson called “three generations.” The first generation are the leaves that the caterpillars munched through. The second generation are leaves that the trees produced later that season, a last chance to collect the light they were deprived of. Each of the more than 5,000 leaves Karson and her students collected were cleaned, pressed, photographed, cropped, processed, labeled and then run through an a-I model to make these: Karson’s brand new third generation…

The A.I model predicts an outline on the leaves, foliage influenced by invasive caterpillars, drought. consumption and the will to survive.

“After being trained on this dataset, another machine has sort of taken over and tried to determine how to fill in the leaf.” said Karson

Karson says the oak tree in her backyard grew two rounds of leaves the two years the spongy moth caterpillars broke out through the region. But this year, her favorite tree is dying. She says this project is to honor the trees of the Champlain valley. She hopes Vermonters see the loss of leaves in their backyard, and think globally toward the depletion of earth’s forests through humanity’s consumption. If artificial intelligence is salvation.

“It helps us with predictions, but ultimately what we do with those predictions is going to be up to what we humans decide to do, and if we’re willing to change our behavior.” said Karson

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