{"id":78641,"date":"2026-08-25T11:10:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T18:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=78641"},"modified":"2026-08-25T11:10:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T18:10:28","slug":"redwoods-and-fog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/redwoods-and-fog\/","title":{"rendered":"What AI can tell us about California redwoods and fog"},"content":{"rendered":"

California\u2019s redwood forests are a national treasure. And the coastal fog that often covers the trees in a mysterious gray shroud?\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0no less beloved.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A few researchers at NAU believe those trees, and that fog, are worth protecting.\u00a0So\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0using machine learning to investigate how the two work together to create a healthy, resilient forest\u2014and how less fog due to climate change may spell trouble for redwood trees in the coming decades.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Camelia Mosor<\/span><\/b>, a third-year undergraduate student at NAU, said\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0well known that fog is a significant source of water for coast redwoods, also known as\u00a0<\/span>Sequoia sempervirens<\/span><\/i>. When fog descends on a forest, the redwoods absorb the moisture through their leaves and roots. Researchers previously found that the California coast\u2019s signature summer nighttime fog is associated with an increase in the growth efficiency of redwoods.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe also know,\u201d Mosor said, \u201cthat the frequency and intensity of summer fog\u00a0has\u00a0declined due to climate change, which has the potential to exacerbate drought sensitivity in coastal plants\u201d like the\u00a0coast\u00a0redwood.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fueled by funds awarded to her by Save the Redwoods League, Mosor is training machine learning to detect and analyze fog levels in images taken in a redwood forest in Monterey County, California. Those images, taken once per hour inside the Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel Valley for two years, come courtesy of the\u00a0PhenoCam\u00a0Network,\u00a0a\u00a0project directed by NAU\u00a0Regents\u2019\u00a0professor\u00a0<\/span>Andrew Richardson<\/span><\/b>\u00a0that chronicles changes in natural landscapes using phenology cameras.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mosor said it would take a human hundreds of years to analyze that many images. But with machine learning, it takes a small\u00a0fraction\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0time.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy training a machine learning model to analyze and automatically detect fog in redwood forest\u00a0PhenoCam\u00a0images, I\u2019m providing a new and efficient method of detecting fog,\u201d Mosor said. \u201cUltimately, I aim to create a method for automated fog detection that will be useful in enabling further research into the role fog plays in redwood forests.\u201d\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once\u00a0she\u2019s\u00a0trained artificial intelligence to accurately recognize the fog, Mosor said, she can\u00a0immediately\u00a0apply the machine learning model to other foggy redwood forests across the region where\u00a0PhenoCams\u00a0exist, including in Sonoma, Santa\u00a0Cruz\u00a0and Del Norte\u00a0counties.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The climate change part<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Mosor\u2019s project is just one piece of a larger research effort at NAU, led by Richardson and Center for Ecosystem Science and Society professor<\/span>\u00a0George Koch<\/span><\/b>, that aims to understand\u00a0how Northern California\u2019s fog patterns are changing as the climate warms\u2014and what that means for the future of the coast redwood.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Along with photos of the forest, NAU scientists are taking regular measurements of temperature, relative humidity, visibility, leaf wetness, tree water\u00a0stress\u00a0and redwood trunk diameter, which are then streamed back to facilities at NAU.\u00a0Koch said the idea is to understand how moisture in the atmosphere controls tree growth.\u00a0Trees tend to dehydrate and shrink over the course of the day, then rehydrate and grow at night as the water provides fuel for them to produce new wood cells.\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that trees grow primarily during the spring through early fall period,\u201d Koch said. \u201cWe are testing the hypothesis that, within this period, growth is greater during foggy episodes because the plants are able to rehydrate more fully.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If Koch\u2019s hypothesis is true, trouble may be ahead for certain redwood forests that\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0seeing as\u00a0much fog as they used to. According to researchers at the Pacific Coastal Fog Research project, fog in Monterey County and other California coastal areas has declined by 33% in the last century. That\u00a0likely means\u00a0coast redwoods\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0growing at the same rate they once were, at least in some forests.\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But with help from the NAU\u00a0PhenoCam\u00a0Network and Mosor\u2019s machine learning models, scientists and their partners can\u00a0identify\u00a0the problem early and take steps toward confronting it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGovernment agencies, nonprofits and others can use this data to inform policy on conservation and identify the redwood forests most in need of conservation efforts,\u201d Mosor said. \u201cAdditionally, analyzing the changes in fog presence could be used to predict how fog will manifest on the coast in future years, which could assist with work in weather forecasting and the study of changing weather patterns due to climate change.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/span><\/p>\n


\nJill Kimball | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-2282 | jill.kimball@nau.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

California\u2019s redwood forests are a national treasure. And the coastal fog that often covers the trees in a mysterious gray shroud?\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0no less beloved.\u00a0 A few researchers at NAU believe those trees, and that fog, are worth protecting.\u00a0So\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0using machine learning to investigate how the two work together to create a healthy, resilient forest\u2014and how less fog…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2880,"featured_media":78643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2880"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78641"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78644,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78641\/revisions\/78644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}