Welcome to 2018 – ForestTECH Issue 11

The ForestTECH annual update on remote sensing and forest inventory technologies is already well established in Australasia. It’s been going since 2007. It continues to be the one event at the end of each calendar year where local foresters involved in resource management get together. Last week we extended the series into Canada for the first time (www.foresttechx.events). As part of the ForestTECHx event, professional foresters and operations managers from Canada’s leading forest companies were introduced to an array of innovative systems designed to measure, monitor and record stand attributes and to improve log value.

In addition to North American and European expertise, we were able to integrate and showcase for the first time some of the very latest technologies being made in this part of the world. Interpine, FCNSW, AusTimber Harvesting and Waratah were all involved in the Vancouver event. It’s intended that some of the innovations and practices being employed in North America will in turn be built into our own series, ForestTECH 2018, later in the year.

In keeping with recent developments, we’ve included a story in this month’s issue on recent testing of state-of-the-art sensor equipment mounted on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) prototypes and a helicopter by a group of 14 trans-Tasman scientists in a NSW forest. This is part of the work being undertaken locally on capturing and processing 3D dense point cloud data for plantation resource assessments.

Other features this month include a story on the rapid growth in the use of UAV’s or drones in the US for natural resource management, some industry firsts in the construction of larger UAV’s, information on a new long-range fixed wing drone that’s got both LiDAR sensing capabilities together with an integrated high resolution RGB camera on board and we’ve included a link to a new 40-page guide on using airborne laser scanning data for forestry applications that’s just been put out by the Canadian Forest Service.

Enjoy this month’s tech update. Remember, if you have a story, article or link that you can share, if you have just published some research in this area and would like another platform to disseminate information to your peers or to the wider industry or if you have information on a new product or innovation that you’d like to share, get in touch by emailing: brent.apthorp@innovatek.co.nz.

Stories this issue:

1. Using drone-based aerial photogrammetry in forestry
2. Forest researchers trial remote sensing technologies
3. Unmanned vehicles getting bigger and bigger
4. Drone use climbs for U.S. natural resource management
5. Forecaster software provider changes
6. Geospatial big data moves to data sharing
7. Using LiDAR in forest inventory – free new guides
8. Four commercial drone trends for 2018
9. New LiDAR drone announced with industry firsts
10. What’s happening to forest inventory in Canada?

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