AI in Earth Science: A GeoAI Perspective

GeoAI, or geospatial artificial intelligence, has transformative potential for Earth science by integrating geospatial data with artificial intelligence to enhance environmental monitoring, predictive modeling, and decision-making. This commentary, based on the Greg Leptoukh Lecture at AGU 2024, explores the evolving role of GeoAI in addressing pressing challenges—from environmental change in the Arctic to disaster response in hurricane-prone tropical regions. It highlights advancements in GeoAI-driven analysis of multimodal Earth observation data, ranging from structured remote sensing imagery to semi-structured data and natural language texts. The integration of knowledge graphs and generative AI further strengthens GeoAI by enabling seamless integration of cross-domain data, semantic reasoning, and knowledge inference. By bridging informatics and domain expertise, GeoAI is shaping a more intelligent and actionable digital future for Earth science.