Starting in 2007, every year, over 300 forest resource managers, remote sensing, GIS and mapping specialists, inventory foresters and technology providers to this part of the industry from throughout Australasia …
Early EOI to present at ForestTECH 2022
Despite continued Covid related disruptions to the running of the annual ForestTECH event, ForestTECH 2021-22 ran, albeit virtually as an on-line event on 23-24 February this year. Over 300 delegates …
Telstra starts carbon farming to offset emissions
Telecommunications giant Telstra is starting its own carbon farm, growing trees to reduce its emissions. Big polluters that want to move towards net zero emissions need to buy carbon credits …
Autonomous drones fly through forests
Expert human drone pilots have proven incredibly adept at piloting UAV through complex courses at high speeds which are still unmatched by autonomous systems. But researchers at the University of …
A prototype forest monitoring framework
From a forest biosecurity perspective, there is growing interest in forest surveillance processes capable of providing information on foliar disease present within the planted estate. Monitoring strategies often rely on …
Celebrating tree planting – with a film festival
“Tree planting transforms us. These are our stories.” On 19 March The 2022 virtual Tree Planting Film Festival entitled We Are the Landscape, provided an inside look into what it …
Shopify purchases carbon offsets from DroneSeed
Reforestation company DroneSeed has announced its largest sale of offsets to date to Shopify, a leading provider of essential internet infrastructure for commerce, which is on a mission to reverse …
The Digital Forester: thoughts from a Canadian forester
Adam Dick is a Science Advisor at the Canadian Wood Fibre Centre, Canadian Forest Service and joins us from Fredericton. Adam was one of the champions that brought lidar enhanced …
Treeswift using drones to monitor forests
Over the past decade, drones have become an increasingly important tool for forest monitoring. They’re a fast and effective way to collect a lot of data in one go, without …
Covid – the tipping point for automation?
Critical labour shortages are the catalyst for companies to finally automate and boost our decades-long productivity stagnation On December 19, 2013 a 20-year-old Levin man, Lincoln Kidd, was crushed to …
ForestTECH News Issue 27 Summary
Welcome to the latest issue of Foresttech.news. It has been a busy month and we have a wealth of stories in this issue. First up, is the release of the …
ForestTECH News Issue 26 Summary
Welcome to the latest issue of Foresttech.news. The highly anticipated programme for November’s ForestTECH 2019 series will be released later this month. Event registrations will also open shortly, with big …
NZ forestry farm prices increase
The median price of forestry farms across New Zealand has increased by 45% over the last year from NZ$6,487 per hectare to NZ$9,394 per hectare according to the Real Estate …
SpaceX goes big for launch
SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, successfully launched in May its first five dozen Starlink telecommunications satellites. This is the first step in the Starlink project, which aims …
World-first robotic logging truck scalers
The world’s first two automated logging truck scalers, commissioned by Mount Maunganui-based ISO Limited, are now scanning logs at Port of Tauranga, New Zealand. The Robotic Scaling Machines (RSM) give …
ForestTECH News Issue 25 Summary
Welcome to the latest issue of Foresttech.news. As mentioned last month, we have started working on the programmes for this November’s ForestTECH 2019 series. Programmes for both Australia and New …
First satellite fleet to monitor CO2
Europe is readying a new fleet of satellites that will monitor CO2 emissions at every point on earth, creating the first worldwide system to independently track polluters. The fleet of …
Victoria’s largest acquisition of forest LiDAR
Victoria’s largest ever acquisition of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data across 1.35 million hectares of Victorian public forests has just commenced. This work will provide important information for supporting …
NZ$14M to expand LiDAR mapping across NZ
The Bay of Plenty is one of the eight regions that will receive co-funding from the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) to obtain LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) elevation datasets. Eight …
How do I successfully launch a mapping drone?
In Waypoint’s newest segment, Ask Andrea, senseFly’s Product and Training Manager, Andrea Blindenbacher, answers questions on launching and landing a mapping drone, such as why it’s important to take off …
How Drones are attracting new graduates
This article relates to how young tech savvy graduates are now being attracted to the oil and gas industry. Transpose the oil and gas industry to forestry. There is an …
ForestTECH News Issue 24 Summary
Welcome to the latest issue of Foresttech.news. ForestTECH 2019, Australasia’s premier forestry technology series, will be running again for forest resource managers, planners, inventory foresters and GIS and mapping specialists. …
Australian business leaders’ eye AI boost but 46% yet to act
New research into Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a growth driver for Australian businesses, today revealed that just over half of Australian organisations (54%) have started to adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI) …
AI to double the rate of innovation in NZ
By 2021, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will allow the rate of innovation in New Zealand to double. Employee productivity gains are also expected to increase 1.5 times, according to a new …
Treemetrics ambitious plans for growth
Forestry software company Treemetrics intends to double, if not treble, its workforce over the coming 12 to 18 months as it embarks on a plan to drive revenues from €1 …
Canada’s supercluster to help forest resource management
Lim Geomatics is thrilled to play a part in the next chapter of Canadian innovation that will see homegrown companies play a much bigger role in the world economy for …
ForestTECH News Issue 23 Summary
Welcome to this latest issue of www.foresttech.news. Thanks for the feedback on the new video section of our website. Videos drawn from recent presentations at ForestTECH events (with speaker approval) …
A look at the Nelson Fires 2019
This web map compares Pre and Post fire, 3m resolution satellite imagery, of the of the Pigeon Valley Fire 2019, Nelson area. The imagery uses the near-infrared band. Using this …
Using drones and AI for koala management
In a paper first published in Nature.com, the authors discuss an interesting applied technology use case, using both drone data collection and AI to allow for the more frequent and …
Making augmented reality your business reality
Showcased at a press conference in Barcelona, Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 augmented reality headset promises more features, better virtual and augmented displays, and a more comfortable experience when wearing the headset. …
How Drones Are Being Used in Australia to Make Farming More Efficient
Guest post by Mark Sheehan, My Drone Authority With the global increase in demand for clean food and other agricultural products, Australian farmers and ranchers are finding that drones are …
Trimble Unveils Next-gen Mixed-reality Device with Microsoft HoloLens 2
Trimble has announced a new wearable hard hat compatible device that enables workers in safety-controlled environments to access holographic information on the worksite—the Trimble® XR10 with HoloLens 2. In addition, …
DATA61 expands robotics infrastructure
CSIRO’s Data61 has announced the opening of its new Robotics Innovation Centre in Queensland, a purpose-built research facility for robotics and autonomous systems, an industry set to be worth AU$23 …
ForestTECH News Issue 22 Summary
Welcome to this latest issue of www.foresttech.news. We brought forward the second issue for the year as we’ve been inundated with forest resource management, remote sensing and inventory management stories. …
Improving the modelling of forest harvesting
Developing tree breakage models is a key parameter in the modelling of forest yield. To model the height at which a stem breaks during harvesting and before log-making can start, …
Drone sets a new world record
During FPT Industrial’s Tech day, FPT Industrial and Forvola broke the Guinness World Record for the heaviest payload lifted by a drone. With 16 propellers giving it enough oomph to …
ForestTECH News Issue 21 Summary
Welcome to this year’s first issue of this region’s forest inventory and remote sensing newsletter, www.foresttech.news. Other than those unfortunately having to work on fire duty (and many of you still …
Investing in resource modelling and remote sensing
Society is undergoing enormous disruption due to the continuous adoption of new digital technology and the forest industry is poised to take advantage of some of these. But successful replacement …
50% of deliveries to be made by drone
If you don’t think drone deliveries are going to take off (excuse the pun), think again. While the U.S. and Europe inch closer to drone delivery, China is racing ahead. …
Airobotics wins unique drone flight approval
Israeli drone provider Airobotics has secured the first-ever approval by Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority to operate drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) from a remote operations centre. In …
Big data technologies driving the bioeconomy
Finnish pilot develops new solution for sustainable forestry Europe is feverishly looking for new ways to use farm, forest and fishery resources more responsibly and sustainably and to promote the …
Land Information NZ develops wilding tool
Land Information New Zealand develops tool to enable public to help fight spread of wilding conifers, which can threaten productive farmland, native ecosystems, tourism, economy; Wilding Watch can be used …
New satellite to be launched with IR capability
Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, has announced that it would be extending its Earth observation capabilities by acquiring Australia’s first CubeSat designed to detect invisible infrared light. To be known …
New lidar scanner improves data collection
Scion, New Zealand’s CRI for forestry and wood products,has a new top-of-the line lidar scanner – the Riegl MiniVUX-1 UAV Snoopy V-series manufactured by LidarUSA. The new piece of equipment …
Voxel-based metrics proving accurate
Using voxel-based analysis of aerial lidar is a promising new development in remote sensing. In the past, high-density lidar has largely been restricted to terrestrial laser scanners. Now, high-density scanners …
ForestTECH News Issue 20 Summary
Welcome to this month’s issue of foresttech.news The ForestTECH 2018 event has just been completed. Many of you were involved as delegates. Feedback from this year’s series has again been …
ForestTECH 2018 – Event Summary
Well over 250 resource managers, remote sensing specialists and inventory foresters from throughout Australasia, SE Asia and South America have participated in the annual ForestTECH 2018 series. “What’s really gratifying …
Drone delivery takes off in Australia
At Amsterdam Drone Week, James Burgess of Google X spinoff Wing showed a system of drone delivery that’s made over 2500 customer flights in a test outside of Canberra, Australia. …
Family business at the forefront of processing photogrammetry
SimActive is a leading developer of photogrammetry software. The Canadian company, which was founded by two brothers – Louis and Philippe Simard – in 2003, celebrates its 15th anniversary this …
DroneSeed automating tree planting
Wildfires are consuming North American forests and grasslands faster than we can replace them. It’s a vicious cycle of destruction and inadequate restoration rooted, so to speak, in decades of …
Future search and rescue autonomous drones
Many of us will have watched TV or movie dramas where a bunch of luckless travellers get totally lost in a dense forest. They hear the unmistakable sound of a …
New technology to remotely assess individual trees
While foresters don’t necessarily have to abandon their diameter tapes and vertex hypsometers, there is no denying that rapidly-evolving remote sensing technologies are revolutionising forest management practices. Field-based inventory methods …
AU start-up hitches a ride with Rocket Lab
Forget the across-the-ditch rivalry: New Zealanders, Australians and Americans are working together to launch a fleet of satellites to power the world’s global IoT communications from space. Rocket Lab and …
Tips for UAV takeoffs and landings
What’s the single most important factor to help facilitate a successful fixed-wing UAV flight? It’s a question we get a lot from UAV (drone) operators across the world. And while …
GEDI to yield 3D forest carbon map
A new NASA laser instrument set to launch to the International Space Station in December will help scientists create the first three-dimensional map of the world’s temperate and tropical forests. …
ForestTECH News Issue 19 Summary
Welcome to this month’s issue of foresttech.news The annual ForestTECH 2018 series is now in full swing. Last week in Rotorua we had a large contingent of resource managers and …
NZ$19M for National LiDAR initiative
Councils in New Zealand that can’t afford three-dimensional mapping of their territories stand to gain from a NZ$19 million grant from the Provincial Growth Fund. Land Information and Economic Development …
Delair announces a new drone platform
Delair has announced a new drone platform specifically optimized for the agriculture and forest industry, the Delair UX11 Ag. Built on the foundation of the successful Delair UX11 fixed-wing UAV, …
Mapping trees with 3D mobile mapping technology
Placed first in Australia and 20th in the world in the 2016 QS University Rankings, Australian National University (ANU) is a research institution with its main campus in Canberra, the …
Airbus partners with NZ research institute
The Centre for Space Science Technology (CSST) and Airbus Defence and Space have announced a partnership agreement, which will give New Zealand businesses, industry, government and the research community access …
New Forest Inventory Reporting System being launched
After a successful release in Australia, Universal Forest Systems has announced that they will be launching the Forest Inventory Reporting System (FIRS) in New Zealand at the Foresttech conference in …
Unlocking the underground with airborne and legged robots
CSIRO’s Data61, the technology arm of Australia’s national science agency, is competing in the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Subterranean (or “SubT”) Challenge , which aims to explore …
Precision forestry: a revolution in the woods
This report by Harsh Choudhry and Glen O’Kelly for McKinsey & Company looks at which advanced technologies for forest management are most promising, and how forestry companies can start their …
ForestTECH News Issue 18 Summary
Welcome to this month’s issue of ForestTECH News. One month to go before this year’s annual ForestTECH event runs. We start in Rotorua, New Zealand on 14-15 November and then …
Forestry Applications for RIEGL’s Waveform-LIDAR technology
Based on innovative Waveform-LiDAR technology, RIEGL laser scanners and systems provide an outstanding high-density point cloud ideally suited for applications in forestry and precision agriculture. Advanced processing algorithms account for …
Near real time forestry monitoring innovation
We recently covered two stories on remote sensing for forestry applications. Below is information linked to a new service being supplied by a South African company, Swift Geospatial who will …
Continuous forest monitoring using daily satellite imagery
In the recent years there has been a marked uptake of remote sensing technologies. Drones and LiDAR have acquired a high profile. These indisputably have a place provided they are …
Tree species mapping from space
Whether you’re the owner of a small private woodland or a forestry company responsible for millions of acres, Rezatec have created a free, useful guide on identifying and mapping tree …
Automatic object detection in point clouds
Classification Approaches and Method Comparison Point clouds are used as a data source for mapping tasks in various application fields. Before an object can be mapped, it needs to be …
Using satellite photogrammetry for forest inventory
Forest management has undergone a transformation in recent decades. Management regimes have shifted from treatments that were applied to entire forests, to precise programmes, that can be tailored to single …
Future directions for Forestry Corporation NSW MapApp
Forestry Corporation NSW (FCNSW) is exploring the possibility of commercialising its highly successful iOS-based MapApp mapping application. The MapApp: Collects, displays and shares spatial information for field-based activities including ecology …
Drone thermal imaging being used before harvesting
The Latrobe Valley-based Hazelwood Forestry company in Victoria, Australia is using unmanned aerial vehicles to keep an eye on the local koala population. According to the Latrobe Valley Express, the …
Drone tree seedling deliveries a reality
While pizza deliveries seem to have caught the press and news articles eye, this innovation in the use of drones can equally show the true potential of these tools being …
Monitoring forest health from afar
UAV multispectral imagery and satellite data can be used to monitor physiological stress in trees. Researchers from Crown research institute Scion treated selected Pinus radiata with herbicide to stress the …
ForestTECH News Issue 17 Summary
Welcome to this month’s issue of ForestTECH News. Registrations to our annual November tech update, ForestTECH 2018 are now flowing in and places to the workshops, already filling up. Event …
Mixed reality now a forestry reality
Virtual, augmented and mixed reality are no longer just for gamers and tech demos. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has called augmented and virtual reality the next major computing platform and …
Extreme fire risk in NZ may double
A warming New Zealand could help its plantation forests grow – but not without extreme fire risk almost doubling by the end of the century. Scion researchers have modelled what …
UAVs and big data are changing fibre supply
With forest company’s industry wide faced with fibre accessibility challenges, the name of the game today is supply chain optimization. A technology company based in Vancouver believes the solution is …
Smart digital strategies for forest management
Field Surveys are an important part of sustainable forest management. Most of the forest departments across Canada have been using traditional paper-based surveys. However, Manitoba Forestry and Peatlands Branch digitalized …
A new type of 3D: The Looking Glass
For the past four years, holographers, engineers, Unity developers and 3D graphic artists have been putting their minds together to create the seemingly magic Looking Glass—a holographic display that uses …
Record maiden flight of solar-powered drone
Last November as part of this region’s ForestTECH series that ran, local forest resource managers heard from Airbus Defence & Space on progress being made on a raft of projects …
Swift Engineering UAS completes forestry mission
Swift Engineering’s Swift020 unmanned aircraft system (UAS) recently completed flights over densely forested areas in Japan. The company worked with the Ishikawa Prefecture Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry, the …
ForestTECH News Issue 16 Summary
Welcome to the 16th monthly issue of ForestTECH News. We mentioned in last month’s issue that we’d been working alongside many of you to pull together this year’s annual technology …
13 GIS data collection apps professionals should try
You bought a GPS receiver. Or, maybe, you just want to get more out of the data from your current receiver. What’s next? Juniper Systems have compiled a list of …
Drone missions to fight California wildfires
The California Air National Guard‘s 195th Airlift Wing recently launched a drone reconnaissance mission to aid firefighting efforts in northern California. At least six people have been killed by the …
Precursors to drones – way back in 1907
In 1907, just a few years after the Wright brothers lifted off in Kitty Hawk, and while human flight was still being measured in metres and minutes, Dr. Julius Neubronner, …
THOR hovers like a helicopter but can fly long-distance
A team of researchers from Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is creating a Transformable Hovering Rotorcraft (THOR) and hopes their design can address the fact that multicopter drones …
ForestTECH 2018 workshops likely to sell out fast
Feedback on the programmes announced last week has already been extremely positive. This year a raft of new disruptive technologies already been trialled in the forestry industry – and allied …
ForestTECH 2018 event details on line
Every year it’s the one event that draws in forest resource managers, remote sensing, GIS and mapping specialists and inventory foresters together. It’s the annual technology programme run at the …
Airobotics makes autonomous drones in a box
Not far from Tel Aviv a drone flies low over a gritty landscape of warehouses and broken pavement. It slowly approaches its home — a refrigerator-sized box inside a mesh …
ForestTECH News Issue 15 Summary
Welcome to the 15th monthly issue of ForestTECH News Every month, numbers of forest resource managers, remote sensing and mapping and GIS specialists, inventory foresters, researchers and key product and service …
Satellite images tell the story of Tolaga Bay
The impact of forestry on the East Coast came to the fore last month as Tolaga Bay was deluged with offcuts. How did it come to this, asks Michael Smith. …
Aquila: Facebook Shuts Down Internet Delivery Drone Project
Facebook has quietly announced that it will no longer be continuing with its Aquila project, a giant drone designed to fly at high altitude and beam down internet connectivity to …
Point Clouds: Laser Scanning vs UAS Photogrammetry
Are photogrammetric point clouds superior to Lidar point clouds, or is it the other way around? To address this topic of ongoing debate, a study Switzerland-based study by Lerch Weber …
Move on joint forest management standard
Australia and New Zealand are closer to developing a joint trans-Tasman standard for forest management following a joint meeting recently between the boards of Responsible Wood and the New Zealand …
Drones could add £42 billion to the UK economy
Drone technology has the potential to transform our economies to be more sustainable and efficient, according to a new report from PwC. The professional services group looked at the impact …
How will open data affect the geospatial business?
Open data is becoming increasingly available all over the world. How will this trend affect the geospatial business? ‘GIM International’ has asked experts from some of the sector’s most influential …
New Report: What are drones being used for in New Zealand?
Airways’ latest Drone Tracker Survey is out – providing a detailed snapshot of where the drone industry in New Zealand is at and what are the key issues for users. …
Insight Robotics receives funding for forestry
Hong Kong venture capital fund Beyond Ventures has joined with Linear Capital of Shanghai to lead a US$9 million investment that will benefit forestry in national parks and other natural …
New tool to predict forestry climate change
Forest managers will be able to gauge the likely effect of climate change on growing conditions in their specific areas with a new interactive online tool developed by the CSIRO …