AI-powered conservation expands in Abu Dhabi

ABU DHABI, UAE — Drones and robots are now full-time members of Abu Dhabi’s conservation team, tasked with planting mangrove seeds and mapping their growth under Nature X Abu Dhabi — a series of tech-powered field projects designed to restore local natural ecosystems faster than ever.

Launched in October by the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, or EAD, and the Advanced Technology Research Council, or ATRC, the initiative moves conservation out of siloed pilots and into coordinated deployments by applying artificial intelligence to everything from mangrove planting and rangeland recovery to aquaculture optimization and seafloor mapping.

EAD’s coastal and wildlife programs served as the nuts and bolts for the new initiative, providing raw images and sensor streams gathered through decades of habitat monitoring. However, the pace of manual processing limited how quickly teams could act.

EAD Secretary-General Shaikha Salem Al Dhaheri said the Nature X program resolves this bottleneck by folding model-driven analytics into existing methods to tighten the loop from data capture to decisions.

“Nature X Abu Dhabi fits seamlessly into EAD’s long-standing program on seabirds, turtles and coastal ecosystems.

“By integrating AI-driven systems into our monitoring work, we are improving the precision, consistency and timeliness of data that was once gathered through extensive manual fieldwork.”

AI is already proving its worth, she said, halving the time needed to collect and review data gathered from fisheries and camera traps, while accuracy keeps improving.

Al Dhaheri described Nature X as “the next evolution in this journey”, expected to enhance EAD’s terrestrial conservation portfolio by bundling those tools into one program that can be deployed wherever the environment needs extra help.

Inside the toolkit

The first Nature X field deployments are already underway in Abu Dhabi’s mangroves, where AI-powered drones are helping EAD turn previously inaccessible areas into thriving restoration sites with remarkable speed and precision.

The technology has already helped expand the emirate’s mangrove cover by 92 percent since the 1980s, now spanning 176 square kilometers — the largest in the UAE — with another 3,600 hectares under active rehabilitation.

“These custom-engineered drones are far more than simple seed dispersers,” Al Dhaheri said.

“They are designed with high precision to identify optimal planting zones, drop seeds accurately, and monitor seedling growth through integrated mapping tools and 3D imaging.”

Another innovation under Nature X is an AI-powered autonomous robot vehicle, developed with Micropolis Robotics, that can prepare and till soil, launch drones, and carry out irrigation operations to increase the chances of germination.

The Plant Genetic Resources Centre, meanwhile, uses AI-powered spectral imaging to identify defects in rare native seeds without damaging them. The resulting datasets not only improve long-term storage strategies, Al Dhaheri said, but also “protect the genetic foundation of Abu Dhabi’s terrestrial ecosystems and safeguard the emirate’s native flora for future generations”.

Beyond land, the Technology Innovation Institute is developing an autonomous underwater vehicle to map coral reefs and oyster beds over 130 km of seafloor. The gathered data will supercharge EAD’s marine protection efforts by detecting early stress and revealing how marine habitats respond to climate and coastal pressures.

Nature X also leans into the blue economy through the Delma Fish farming project, which uses AI to monitor water quality, fish health and behavior to fine-tune conditions in offshore cage farms. Complementing this effort, Al Dhaheri added, is a region-first drone system that improves growth rates and reduces waste through automated fish feeding runs.

All information streams run through a shared Environmental Data Platform, which helps EAD coordinate restoration activities and has already cut research time tenfold while lowering costs and emissions.

Together, the Nature X ecosystem illustrates EAD’s move toward what Al Dhaheri described as “a smarter, faster and more responsive model of conservation where every data point helps protect biodiversity”.

Nabat, a startup launched through ATRC’s VentureOne accelerator, is one of the key technology partners supporting EAD’s mangrove restoration program under Nature X.

“Our mission is science-led and technology-enabled,” said Mehdi Ajana, Nabat’s head of strategy.

“We believe that ecologists are already doing an amazing job and a very complex effort to restore ecosystems, but that effort won’t scale if we don’t use technology.”

Nabat’s partnership with EAD is already delivering at scale, with a mandate to restore thousands of hectares of mangroves by 2030. Ajana described the workflow as a fully connected loop, from sensing to planting to verification, but stressed that Nabat’s tools are not designed to override nature.

“Our drone can plant up to 10,000 trees per hour and about 10,000 per hectare. It’s able to do it efficiently without wasting seeds, and most importantly, in a non-invasive way,” he said. The next step is to adapt the planting mechanism for different mangrove species and locations, and extend it to other environments, including seagrass meadows, arid forests and coral reefs.

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