Forestry resource managers, remote sensing GIS and mapping specialists, inventory foresters and key technology suppliers from throughout Australasia were involved in ForestTECH 2019. Over 250 delegates were involved this year. As well as Australian and New Zealand companies, this time the annual event drew in forestry companies and key tech providers from the USA, Germany, South Africa, Chile, Spain, Indonesia, …
Low cost high precision seedling inventories
SKYLAB in Hamburg, Germany have just presented at this year’s ForestTECH 2019 series. Two practical workshops yesterday finished the series of conferences, exhibitions and workshops that have been run for local forestry companies over the last two weeks. Local foresters have heard how SKYLAB has just developed a machine learning algorithm for high precision seedling inventories. Manual surveys for seedling …
Drones to plant hundreds of trees in minutes
At the recent ForestTECH 2019 series run for New Zealand and Australian foresters, a US company, DroneSeed, outlined their work with forestry companies using swarms of drones for both planting and spraying. Trials with planting have just been completed in New Zealand. Another company has also been working behind the scenes on a similar concept. Two drone enthusiasts have devised …
CSIRO wins award for using space tech to solve UN land degradation challenge
CSIRO received the inaugural 2019 GEO Sustainable Development Goals Award for Innovation during GEO Week 2019 in Canberra, a global meeting of more than 1100 delegates from government, business, non-profit and research agencies. CSIRO’s award-winning work is being used by more than 140 countries around the world to track and compare their progress in addressing land degradation, contributing to a …
Virtual reality engages tech-hungry learners
With the increased need to integrate meaningful and engaging technology and ICT capability tools in schools, teachers are increasingly required to discover and learn new ways to incorporate these tools in the classroom to meet their busy curriculum. Smartboards, webquests, ipads, laptops – the need to engage our active learners in new and interesting ways is ongoing. It can be …
New version of the Woodlot Analysis Tool available
The Woodlot Analysis Tool is now available on the Forest Growers Research website. The Woodlot Analysis Tool has a focus on small forest growers in New Zealand, to provide an easy to use tool to estimate the net return from the harvesting of their woodlot or small forest. On opening, the tool shows Google Maps with a location pin on …
DJI drones banned by U.S. Government
The U.S. Department of Interior has announced that it would ground its fleet of DJI drones. The decision, which is the result of congressional pressure, is the latest move in the argument over banning government use of technology based solely upon “country of origin”: a direct blow to Chinese manufacturers. The proposed ban on Chinese-manufactured drones stems from legislation currently …
VR software application for forest inventories
Rapid developments in VR (Virtual Reality) technology make it timely to explore the potential of advanced 3D visualisation to support forest inventory. VR offers the potential for field staff to transfer their skills to within a 3D and 1:1 scaled immersive environment and to use VR tools to measure tree dimensions within a point cloud dataset. The technology has been …