ForestTECH News | Issue 58

Welcome to the latest issue of Foresttech.News.

First off. For our loyal ForestTECH community, the good news is that the live – face to face – gathering that has been put on hold for three years in Australia (and, two years in New Zealand) is planned to be run live in both Rotorua and Melbourne in mid-late November.

Since 2020, the cross over between new data collection technologies for forest estate reporting and operational planning and precision forestry innovations around forest establishment and tree crop management have meant that these two major themes have been combined into the one single event.

Overwhelmingly, feedback from delegates attending ForestTECH 2020 and ForestTECH 2021-22 have told us to stay with the same two themes for this year’s event. Key players across Australasia, North and South America and Europe have together been working on the programme design. Details along with the conference, workshops and exhibition programmes are expected to be posted onto the event website (www.foresttech.events/ft22) in the next few days. Further details will follow in future issues.

In keeping with trials and operations in NZ and Australia around mechanised planting (with results from several major commercial operations from this planting season to be discussed in November), we feature this month a review of mechanical or robotic tree pruning systems being used for plantation forest management internationally. The full report commissioned by FWPA is available here for downloading. We also provide details of a Swedish company that’s been working on their own lightweight 6-metre diameter drone which they’re trialling to thin forest stands from the air.

Check out these stories, videos and much more below. Enjoy this month’s issue.