The Story Behind the Project
My wife and I are true nature lovers. Indeed, a major reason for our move out to Washingon state was our love for the outdoors! Throughout our time living in the Pacific Northwest, my wife is the one who stops to admire the bark patterns on a Pacific Madrone, wonders aloud how many Douglas Firs we’ll see at the start of each trail, and reminds me to plan for our annual fall “larch march,” when the Western Larch turns gold while all the other conifers stay green.
The PNW Tree Identifier serves as a project inspired by our trail-side conversations. It combines two things I care about: data science and the forests we're lucky enough to live near. The entire training dataset comes from iNaturalist, a platform powered by the same kind of curiosity that my wife brings to every hike - thousands of people photographing, sharing, and identifying the living world around them.
It's not a replacement for a good field guide or a knowledgeable hiking partner, but it's a fun tool for narrowing down your guesses… and for learning to see the differences between trees you might have walked past a hundred times without a second glance.
Find Me Online
My name is Vivek Sriram! I’m a Senior Health AI Scientist based in Seattle, WA. I work at the intersection of generative AI, agentic systems, and multimodal biomedical data to build reliable, interpretable, and production-grade AI systems for real-world healthcare impact. You can learn more about my work and other projects at viveksriram.com.