Forest & Wood Products Australia (FWPA) is developing a single, centralised database for private forestry information through a national project to collect and collate information about commercial farm plantations, private native forests and Indigenous managed forests around Australia.FWPA’s Chris Lafferty said the project presents a significant and unique opportunity. “So much work has been undertaken, through funded programs or by …

Whether it’s wildfires that sweep across the West Coast, storms rolling in from the Pacific Ocean or dense fog that blankets the Pacific Northwest, a new weather satellite will be able to track them all. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched GOES-T, the third in its series of advanced geostationary weather satellites, at 4:38 p.m. ET Tuesday from Cape …

A controversy is brewing between remote sensing scientists and administrators from NASA and the agency’s international partners. The debate centers around how long the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar system will continue to operate from the International Space Station before the system is decommissioned and left to burn up in the atmosphere. Since 2019, scientists have used GEDI to …

Drones have become an essential tool for forestry companies over the last decade. Technology continues to evolve and many consumer drones are now incorporating some of the advanced imaging, video stabilisation, control and automated features previously seen in more specialised (and expensive) models. PC Mag has just released a detailed breakdown of the best consumer drones for 2022. While you …

Thanks to sensor miniaturization, laser technology is available for surveying and mapping professionals in many different guises nowadays. This selection of articles highlights the diversity of Lidar as a flexible tool for capturing the environment. From backpacks to handheld scanners and from drones to helmets, this type of remote sensing technology can be mounted on almost any device imaginable, resulting …

The second day of the just-completed ForestTECH 2021/22 event focussed on advancements in automated silviculture with a particular focus on mechanised planting operations – new technology, developing technologies and an insight into results from local forest trials and commercial planting operations. In short, like Europe and South America in particular, the cost and availability of labour for planting have both …

Victoria’s forestry industries are set to benefit from five new research projects funded by the National Institute for Forest Products Innovation (NIFPI) centre in Gippsland. Federal Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries Jonno Duniam, and Victorian Minister for Agriculture Mary Anne Thomas congratulated the funding recipients and welcomed the benefits these projects will bring to Gippsland and the wider industry …

• More than 24 million hectares (59 million acres) burned during Australia’s devastating “Black Summer” bushfire season of 2019-2020, which formed part of a confirmed climate change-driven trend of worsening fire weather and larger, more intense forest fires. • Scientists are still assessing the extent of the damage and are calling for a greater focus on understanding the effects of …

The Biomass Carbon Monitor provides global maps of annual change in carbon stocks held in forest biomass Forests and vegetation play a major role in removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The Biomass Carbon Monitor, just launched, is the first geospatial platform to provide information about regional biomass carbon changes, which can be used as to track net gains and losses …

How is the geospatial industry evolving in today’s turbulent times? What are the trends and developments in the sector, and where is the business heading? Read the findings from GIM International’s recent annual industry survey for the answers to these and other questions. And needless to say, there is much more to discover in the latest edition of GIM International’s …

Scion data scientists working with remote sensing experts Indufor have developed a new commercial service to monitor forest establishment and indigenous forest fragments. New Zealand will need to plant forests at unprecedented rates for decades to come if the country wishes to achieve its carbon neutrality goals and develop a renewable and sustainable bioeconomy. Successful establishment of newly planted trees …

The latest episode of FWPA’s WoodChat series of podcasts takes a deep dive into some exciting Australian projects focused on the fusion of forestry and technology to help shape and strengthen the forests of the future. Listeners are invited to discover how scientists are working to make smarter, healthier and more productive forests, utilising everything from Artificial Intelligence (AI) to …

It was quite a fitting week with the Australasian forestry industry celebrating 15 years of ForestTECH, Australasia’s premier annual forest technology conference running on 23-24 February – an event that has enabled and empowered our industry with game changing technology – to officially launch the new Tools for Foresters website. It was launched as part of the Remote Sensing Cluster …

This ABARES Position Paper identifies drivers for change in the mechanism of forest reporting through Australia’s State of the Forests Report (SOFR), including increasing user expectations for access to current forest data, and access to information and analysis in digital, online formats. Three major options are then presented to respond to these drivers: status-quo five-yearly reporting; online-only five-yearly reporting; and …

When I registered the company name Australian UAV in early 2103 the landscape for drone technology was very different to that that we work in today. There were 35 ReOC holders in Australia (at time of writing this article there are now 2437). To become an operator, you needed to complete and pass the private pilot’s licence exam and CASA …

Otago forestry workers are using new radio technology to manage 23,730 hectares of forest more safely, even enabling them to perform under Covid-19 restrictions. Initially deployed to replace an outdated analogue radio network, the system delivers many additional benefits for forestry company, City Forests. Among those benefits are contact-free communication and social distancing in the field, replacing the news for …

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is increasingly being fused with air/spaceborne Lidar to characterise vegetation structure across a range of forest ecosystems. This article explores the potential of this approach to support scaling up for larger areas in practice. TLS is an important tool for plot-scale measurements of tree and forest structure. These local measurements are meaningful to support the quantification …

Mapping the world’s carbon stores is essential for taking stock of the climate crisis. It informs our climate solutions, the emissions targets’ that countries set and so – it goes without saying – the figures need to be as accurate as possible. It’s not an easy picture to take, however. Humans are constantly upsetting the amount of carbon in forests, …

Media Release [21 Dec 2021]: Kea Aerospace Achieves Longest Endurance UAV Flight In New Zealand On Sunday 19th December Kea Aerospace has recorded the longest known flight for an unmanned aircraft in New Zealand, in an electric-powered flight above Kaitōrete, near Christchurch. The battery and solar-powered vehicle flew non-stop for 14 hours and 3 minutes, beating the previous record of …

Tuesday marked the official launch of a new, innovative farm forestry program, Decision Tree, in Bunbury, Western Australia. Decision Tree has been designed to rapidly assess the suitability of farms for plantation forestry, as well as provide information and assistance to landowners seeking to plant trees. Through Decision Tree’s unique assessment tool, farmers or landowners simply add in a few …

Last year we detailed a forest canopy sampling tool that was developed by a Canadian company, DeLeaves and is being used operationally, principally in North America and Europe. Suspended under an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the sampling tool is self-powered, equipped with an HD camera, and has two robotic arms there to grab and cut foliage samples from trees. As …

Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and the NSW Rural Fire Service have released Australia’s most advanced model for predicting the speed and behaviour of eucalypt forest fires, helping to save lives and property during bushfires. Eucalypts make up more than 70 per cent of Australia’s forests and some of Australia’s most extreme fire events, such as the 2009 Black Saturday …

Food and pasture growers as well as the forestry industry rely on glyphosate to prevent deep-rooted weeds from taking over their crops and decimating productivity, according to a report by the NZIER on the benefits of glyphosate to New Zealand. The world’s most widely-used weed management tool has extensive economic and environmental benefits. It enables farmers and growers to deliver …

Private Forests Tasmania and the Forest Practices Authority have developed Treemapper, a farm and forestry property planning app. The ‘Property Planning Mapper’ mobile application will deliver a handful of mapping and calculator tools to provide immediate farm-planning benefit for landowners, consultants, planners, contractors, and land agents. This will improve the easiness of planning, mapping, and managing properties to expand the …

This ABARES Position Paper identifies drivers for change in the mechanism of forest reporting through Australia’s State of the Forests Report (SOFR), including increasing user expectations for access to current forest data, and access to information and analysis in digital, online formats. Three major options are then presented to respond to these drivers: status-quo five-yearly reporting; online-only five-yearly reporting; and …

Safeguarding New Zealand’s waterways is the key driver behind a seven-year study into the performance of control practices for reducing erosion and sediment delivered to rivers from forest harvesting. The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has partnered with forestry company OneFortyOne New Zealand, providing NZ$1.37 million through its Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund to the NZ$3.6 million project. The …

Ernslaw One and its advisor Cranleigh Partners have announced that Ernslaw has completed an agreement to sell the Whangapoua and Ruatoria forests with a combined area of 15,100 productive hectares to Summit Forests New Zealand Limited. Yong Tiong, Executive Director of the Oregon Group, the parent company of Ernslaw One, said this was a significant step forward in executing Ernslaw’s …

Tree seedling company ArborGen has agreed to sell its New Zealand and Australian assets to a consortium led by Hugh Fletcher for $22.25 million. ArborGen is one of the last remnants of the former Fletcher Forests, and has a range of nurseries producing seedlings for the timber and agriculture industries. The company disclosed in June that it was undertaking a …

Revolutionary Bushfire Management platform leverages multiple data sources and climate change-adjusted fire weather projections to predict rate of bushfire spread and intensity, fuel loads and preparedness levels. The platform has already drawn interest from government agencies and asset owners in the Energy, Telecommunications, Mining & Resources spaces, with a number of trials already successfully completed and more underway. Queensland-founded global …

In the lead up to ForestTECH 2021/22, we will be adding new videos to our ForestTECH News Video Showcase page. This page already has over 50 forest technology videos and is one of our most popular resources. This month we have added an on-demand Planet webinar on forest management and another from TerraLab on tracking weed management.

Civil governments around the world are making sustainable strides in local environmental management; and by using satellite-enabled data, they are able to analyze and support preventative management techniques to protect local communities and ecosystems. For example, Forest Fire Management Victoria, a governmental organization located in Victoria, Australia, leverages high-resolution tasking capabilities from Planet’s SkySat constellation to analyze its effectiveness in …

Disease and pest free animals and crops rely on agrichemical use. Pesticides, detergents and sanitisers are a critical component of New Zealand’s NZ$48 billion agricultural sector. The recently released and updated ‘NZS 8409:2021 Management of agrichemicals’ provides guidance for spray operators, farmers, growers and other users to manage a range of chemicals safely, responsibly and effectively. Having undergone its first …

After talking to presenters, exhibitors and delegates for this year’s eagerly awaited ForestTECH 2021 event that was planned to run on 23-24 November 2021, it has been agreed to postpone the event for a few months. The uncertainty still around the evolving Covid situation in New Zealand and safety concerns for those travelling into Rotorua to attend the conference, workshops and exhibitions …

Two European pension funds, APG Asset Management (APG) on behalf of its Dutch pension fund client ABP, and UK’s Pension Protection Fund (PPF), have agreed to purchase Sinotrans New Zealand Limited’s (Sinotrans NZ) shareholding in Wenita Forest Products Limited (Wenita). Wenita is the largest producer of timber in Otago, New Zealand, across almost 30,000 hectares of sustainably managed forests. With …

DroneSeed has announced it has raised US$36 million in its Series A funding round. The round was led by Social Capital and Seven Seven Six, with participation from new and existing investors. Part of these funds were used to acquire Silvaseed, a 130-year-old forestry company, to expand DroneSeed’s seed collection and seedling cultivation services. A pioneer in climate tech and …

SilviScan is a multifaceted technology comprised of an advanced suite of software and instruments including a cell scanner, x-ray densitometer, and x-ray diffractometer, which are used together to measure wood structure and quality that are most relevant to industry. This technology can measure the tiniest fibre dimensions within a tree and the data may then be used to map the …

In September 2018, the federal government unveiled a plan to radically expand Australia’s timber plantations by one billion trees over a decade. Today, less than 1 per cent of that goal has been planted.  “At this rate, forget hitting the 2050 target; it will take 357 years to hit a billion trees,” independent senator Rex Patrick told parliament.  Despite the pledge …

In September 2020, the Norwegian Government announced a contract providing public access to high-resolution satellite imagery of tropical forests. Never has the public had open access to satellite imagery with such high spatial and temporal resolution. But what does this data windfall mean for forest monitoring? How will it contribute to our goals of reducing tropical deforestation and restoring forest …

Amendments to the Climate Change Response Act 2002 in June 2020 delivered a range of improvements to the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). These reforms aim to drive a substantial increase in afforestation, reduce operational complexity and improve ease of compliance for forestry participants. Most of the new forestry provisions will come into force on 1 January 2023 and apply …

There are many situations where data is not available in the quantity desired, but you don’t need to wait for the ideal scenario to get started with AI. You can gain valuable insights from AI even when working with limited data. We know that data is the fuel for AI. But how much data do we need to create an …

US-based enterprise drone data company DroneDeploy has acquired Rocos, a New Zealand-based robotics software company, in a move that will allow its customers in construction, energy and agriculture to deploy both aerial and ground robots on job sites. The San Francisco company creates software for to allow users to operate drones with mobile apps. The deal with Rocos will allow …

Driven by Increasing Demand for Reforestation in the Face of Wildfires & Climate Change, Acquisition of Silvaseed Co. Positions DroneSeed as Vertically-Integrated Leader in Reforestation DroneSeed announced that it has acquired Silvaseed Company, a 130 year-old titan in the forestry seed collection and seedling supply business. The move expands DroneSeed’s reforestation services beyond aerial drone-based seeding to span seed collection, …

2021 continues to be a leap forward in drone-based UAV LiDAR at Interpine. To complement their two Emesent Hovermap LiDAR units they have also recently purchased the DJI Zenmuse L1 LiDAR + RGB solution for the DJI Matrice 300 RTK. Simultaneous collection of high-resolution 20MP 1-inch CMOS RGB camera with Livox LiDAR module and high accuracy IMU provides a solution …

With a total length of 2,789km, the Trans-Sumatra Toll Road Project is one of Indonesia’s National Strategic Projects and the longest toll road project in Southeast Asia. In order to keep the project on track for the scheduled completion date of 2024, UAV-Lidar was chosen as the topographic data acquisition method, combined with building information modelling (BIM), to optimize the …

According to the NSW Fire and Environment Summary, about a quarter of New South Wales’ best koala habitat were burned in the bushfires. Other areas of Australia are also not untouched by this tragedy. In Victoria, bushfires have destroyed koalas reserves and other endangered habitats leading to heavy losses of flora and fauna. Forest officers and environmentalists are having a …

As outlined in a recent issue, this year’s ForestTECH 2021 programme being run in Rotorua, New Zealand on 23-24 November will be built around two main themes. The first is remote sensing, data capture, GIS, mapping and forest inventory technologies and the second, forest establishment, mechanised planting and silviculture. Much of the planting focus this year will be on the …

USC researchers will develop a citizen science app for people living in fire-prone areas to help predict the likelihood of bushfires in Australia and minimise their devastating effects. The University has been awarded an Australian Government Citizen Science Grant of almost AU$500,000 to design and implement the app, called NOBURN (National Bush Fire Resilience Network). Citizen scientists from around the …

As light detection and ranging (lidar) technology evolves, forest ecology and ecological restoration researchers have been using these tools in a wide range of applications. “We needed an accounting of relative accuracy and errors among lidar platforms within a range of forest types and structural configurations,” said associate professor Andrew Sánchez Meador, executive director of NAU’s Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI). Sánchez …

For many years, Dr Christine Stone of the NSW Department of Primary Industries has been leading research projects around the use of remote platforms equipped with various types of sensors to capture high-resolution data that will aid forest management. The technology has become operational in plantation forestry in support of research assessment and planning and detection of animal habitats. It …

This will mark the first time Australia has managed its own source of Earth observation data, contributing to the growth of the nation’s space industry.  The satellite can take images of the Earth through all weather conditions, including heavy cloud and smoke, offering a valuable data advantage to the many industries now harnessing the estimated $2.5 billion in economic benefits …

Gresham House is pleased to announce that it will be appointed as asset manager for a 24,800-hectare Australian forestry investment, Green Triangle Forest Products (GTFP), which AXA IM Alts has agreed to acquire, subject to regulatory approval, on behalf of clients. Gresham House also acted as the advisor for AXA IM Alts in relation to this transaction. The appointment as …

Investment house AXA IM has taken control of 24,000 hectares of pine plantations straddling the border between Victoria and South Australia in a $775 million deal with US fund manager Global Forest Partners, the biggest timber transaction in the country for more than a decade. The acquisition is the first investment in Australian forestry for AXA IM, which manages almost …

Murray Woods, Principal Consultant at Treedimensions, shares his experiences with and thoughts about airborne, terrestrial and hand-held lidar, single photon lidar, lidar enhanced forest inventories, area-based vs. individual tree-based lidar inventories, best practices for field sampling for lidar inventories, whether lidar can remotely sense age and much more.

A recent South African study created crop type maps using Lidar, Sentinel-2 and aerial data along with several machine learning classification algorithms for differentiating four crop types in an intensively cultivated area. Crop type maps are frequently generated using remotely sensed data acquired by sensors mounted on satellites, manned aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or ‘drones’), the most popular …

AFRY has acquired Simosol Oy, a Finland-based company that specialises in advanced simulation and optimisation solutions for forest and agricultural assets. The acquisition is in line with AFRY’s ambition to become the global leader in Smart Forestry digital services and solutions. AFRY Smart Forestry offering developed by AFRY Management Consulting creates value through combining AFRY’s forest value chain expertise and …

Nelson Artificial Intelligence (NAI), a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for thorny environmental challenges, has spun off its first business after securing a NZ$1.8 million investment in technology that gives landowners streamlined access to forest carbon credit markets. Tauranga-based WNT Ventures has backed the spin-off, CarbonCrop, to compete globally in the large and growing market for carbon sequestration management …