Title: Smart Teaching for Forestry Education and Practices in China
Time: Tuesday. July 29, 2025, 6–7 PM PDT (Vancouver)
Speaker: Prof. Lin Cao
College of Forestry and Grassland, College of Soil and Water Conservation, Nanjing Forestry University
Profile:
My researches focus on advancing the applications of remote sensing technologies to estimate forest structural, biophysical and biochemical properties at a range of spatial and temporal scales, as well as the applications of novel technologies in smart forestry for precision silviculture, forest management and biodiversity monitoring. Key areas of my interests include applying LiDAR technology to sustainable forest management, developing new methodologies for high throughput forest phenotyping using UAV, and linking multi-sources, multi-temporal remote sensing data to forest growth and biodiversity.
At Nanjing Forestry University (NJFU), I teach the courses of Introduction to Smart Forestry, Forest Information Science and LiDAR Applications in Forestry. I also serve as the Deputy Dean responsible for undergraduate education in the College of Forestry and Grassland, the College of Soil and Water Conservation, NJFU..
Abstract:
Accelerating the innovative application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in forestry higher education is an important means to improve the quality of education and teaching. Forestry higher education urgently needs to undergo profound changes in its educational structure, teaching mode, learning paradigm and evaluation methods, in order to shape a new ecology of “AI+” education and teaching.
Nanjing Forestry University (NJFU) actively promotes the construction of smart teaching for forestry higher education. First, a virtual simulation experiment teaching sharing platform has been established, and the NJFU Plan for the construction of virtual simulation experiment courses were formed. Second, the “Shuishan Digital Integrated Teaching Cloud Platform” was built and focused on promoting high-quality development of undergraduate education empowered by AI technology. Finally, an integrated platform for the smart courses was built, a “knowledge graph and question database”, a course specific “intelligent agent” and “digital person” were created, and multiple evaluations and an “AI+forestry” collaborative innovation platform for industry, academia, and research were also established.