Every year one major forest technology series is run in this region. It’s designed by and for Australasian forestry resource managers, inventory foresters, researchers and tech developers. It’s the one event every year where remote sensing, GIS, mapping and forest inventory specialists, and for the first-time last year, tree crop and silvicultural managers – get-together. It’s independent. It’s run by …

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 …

ForestTECH is this region’s most popular annual independent forestry technology series. This year, in addition to advances being made in remote sensing and forest inventory, like ForestTECH 2020, one of the two days has been set aside to profile the very latest developments in forest establishment, mechanised planting and silviculture. This year, in addition to two days of conferencing and …

In a recent launch, Outsight said that they are bringing the power of real-time LiDAR technology to the forestry industry. In an associated media release, they were offering; An automated 3D solution that produces a 360° forest mapping in real time, and collects data on individual trees which operators can digitally tag Portable: the LiDAR box integrating Outsight’s software can …

Researchers from the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies at the University of Eastern Finland, and from the Finnish Environment Institute, are collaborating in the IBC-Carbon project to develop novel remote sensing methods that can be used explore forest biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Led by Professor of Environmental Geoinformatics Timo Kumpula and Leading Scientist Petteri Vihervaara (Finnish Environment Institute), the …

Tree-tracking technology is drawing investor attention as the boom in planting pledges to combat climate change highlights a basic problem: how to identify new growth and how healthy it remains. Remote tracking tools using a combination of artificial intelligence, drones and satellite imagery are attempting to monitor vast swaths of land to map forests and calculate the volumes of carbon …

New, accurate lower limits for measuring tree height have been established using unmanned aerial vehicles. Height is a good indication of how productive (and healthy) a tree is. Height can be measured from the ground, but this can be expensive and time consuming, especially over large areas. An alternative method is to use laser scanners mounted on aircraft or unmanned …

When we think of old tech in space, we think of the retrofuturism of old sci-fi movies like Star Wars and Alien — their huge 8-bit computers and monochrome screens presented at the time as the height of technology. Seemingly taking one step further back on the technological evolutionary timeline, a project called WISA WOODSAT is sending a small satellite …

New Zealand’s aerospace industry is getting a boost through the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), to grow the capability of the sector and potentially lead to joint space missions, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods has announced. 12 New Zealand organisations have been chosen to work with world-leading experts at DLR to complete feasibility studies related to propulsion, space communications …

New Australian space startup Quasar Satellite Technologies is set to revolutionise space communication, allowing ground stations to talk to hundreds of satellites at once using technology developed by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. Over the next decade, more than 57,000 satellites will be launched worldwide to support a surge in demand for space-derived data, from environmental monitoring such as bushfires …

The Australian Association for Unmanned Systems hosted the RPAS in Australian Skies 2021 conference in March 2021. This was an important event for the industry and continued the discussion on the safe integration of commercial drone in Australia. Bennett+Co has released the report, ‘Drone Industry Update – 2021: Communication, Complexity and the Emerging Airspace Ecosystem’. This report provides a detailed …

The Australian Government is laying the foundations for new jobs in the new frontier of aviation services with the release of the National Emerging Aviation Technologies (NEAT) Policy Statement. As part of the Government’s new Digital Economy Strategy, the statement sets out how the Government will support individuals and businesses to harness the opportunities offered by digital aviation technologies such …

New Zealand’s aerospace industry is getting a boost through the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), to grow the capability of the sector and potentially lead to joint space missions, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods has announced. 12 New Zealand organisations have been chosen to work with world-leading experts at DLR to complete feasibility studies related to propulsion, space communications and remote sensing …

Airbus is introducing autonomous features to its helicopter Flightlab through a project code-named Vertex. These technologies aim to simplify mission preparation and management, reduce helicopter pilot workload, and further increase safety. The autonomous technology bricks set to integrate the Flightlab are: vision based sensors and algorithms for situational awareness and obstacle detection; fly-by-wire for enhanced auto-pilot; and an advanced human-machine-interface …

With the introduction of environmental policies comes an increasing need to monitor changes across landscapes. While high revisit satellite data is touted as providing such a solution; it is often difficult to cope with the volumes of data, filter and interpret changes in a structured way. Indufor’s monitoring system, ‘MO’ presents a rapid, scalable approach to landscape-level change detection. ‘MO’ …

ForestTECH – What is it? ForestTECH is Australasia’s premier annual forest technology event. It’s being run now for 14 years, principally in New Zealand and Australia. It’s aimed at resource managers, remote sensing, GIS and mapping specialists, inventory foresters and more recently, tree crop supervisors and forest establishment and silvicultural managers. ForestTECH 2021 is running in Rotorua, New Zealand, on …

Business leaders faced a topsy-turvy world even before COVID-19 hit. Technological change was bewilderingly rapid, customer attitudes and behaviours were shifting dramatically, political uncertainty was growing and global competition was increasing. The pandemic has turbocharged change to such an extent that constant learning is now more essential than ever. Harnessing the positives that come with Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be critical. It’s …

Rocos recently hosted a ‘Rise of the Service Robots’ webinar, in partnership with Avanade. Alongside our CEO David Inggs, the panel featured expert speakers from Avanade, Orlando Health and Hello Robot. According to the experts, we’re entering an exciting new era of automation. We’re seeing the emergence of autonomous service robots in many different form factors – capable of performing …

What if technologies could be installed permanently within forest environments? And what if this enabled our forests to function like ‘smart cities’, where equipment is continuously used to support optimal management of the surroundings? The latest episode of the WoodChat series of podcasts considers exactly that! Listeners will hear how advanced technologies are currently being used in Tasmania to monitor …

Imagine a system that could detect any bushfire in Australia within minutes of ignition so firefighters could tackle the blaze before it spreads. Recently, an important development on the road to this future: a Queensland-based company, Fireball, announced the first purpose-built satellite for fire detection in Australia. Scheduled for launch a year from now, the satellite is the first of …

All mainstream network operators in New Zealand are steadily deploying 5G across the country. While we explore the scale of innovation and growth that 5G offers in almost all sectors of life, researchers around the world are already working on 6G – the sixth generation of mobile phone technology. This obviously raises at least six basic questions: Do we really …

In this article, we introduce a deep learning pipeline that extracts information from high-resolution aerial data. The solution extends our current machine learning processes that use an object-based approach for identifying tree seedlings using data captured by a cessna-mounted imaging system. In this example, we take implementation one step further and use a deep learning segmentation model that extracts information …

A National Elevation Programme currently being carried out by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) in partnership with Regional Councils aims to make available a consistent, high quality baseline elevation dataset for all of New Zealand within the next few years. The power of this dataset lies in its ability to provide a deeper understanding of our landscape …

DroneSeed, the innovative drone planting company that has presented at the last two ForestTECH events and has undertaken operational trials in forests a number of local locations, has been recognised by Fast Company as one of the Most Innovative Companies in Robotics in 2021.DRONESEED – For replanting fire-ravaged forests We’ve just seen the worst wildfire season on record in the …

Fortunately, a full series of technology events and shows are being planned in Australasia by the Forest Industry Engineering Association (FIEA). A full list of events can be found on the FIEA website. This week, Rotorua hosted the annual MobileTECH Ag 2021 event and in just three weeks’ time, forest managers and harvesting contractors will be coming into Rotorua for …

Margules Groome, on behalf of the New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI), are currently undertaking the 2020 update to the New Zealand wood availability forecasts (WAF). These forecasts build on the National Exotic Forest Description (NEFD) data, provided by New Zealand plantation forest owners, to predict the potential wood availability at both national and regional levels. These forecasts are …

Through a combination of predictive algorithms, prescriptive optimization-based modelling, and a live operational planning system, artificial intelligence (AI) can enable continuous improvement throughout the forestry supply chain and provide real competitive advantage in fast-changing markets. Global industries are benefiting from a confluence of improved data acquisition and management platforms and advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For the forest industry, …

UNSW Canberra Space’s M2 CubeSat satellites successfully launched with Rocket Lab’s ‘They Go Up So Fast’ mission from New Zealand earlier today, representing a significant step forward in Australia’s sovereign space capabilities. The M2 mission, a collaboration between UNSW Canberra Space and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), brings together emerging technologies that deliver advanced capabilities in Earth observation, maritime surveillance, …

Humans and computers generated more than 64 zettabytes of data in 2020 – that’s the equivalent of 6.4 trillion gigabytes or simply put, more images or videos than the average person takes in their lifetime. Such a massive figure not only reflects what IDC calls ‘unusually high’ growth of data as people lived and worked almost entirely home, but it …

Lidar technology is synonymous with 3D point clouds. What are the latest trends for the four most popular Lidar platforms, and how are the developments benefiting end users of the point cloud data? Within the spatial industry there are four popular platforms for producing point clouds: 1) Airborne Lidar which captures data from above using aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles …

Skydio, the leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight, today announced that Skydio X2 has received the CES® 2021 Best of Innovation Award for Drones and Unmanned Systems. The announcement was made ahead of the first-ever, all-digital CES 2021, the world’s most influential technology event, happening Jan. 11–14, 2021. The CES Innovation Awards program, owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®, …

An Australian mining group has advanced the future of mobility (in mining at least) with the deployment of a fleet of fully-autonomous Ford Rangers at one of its mines. Fortescue Metals Group has retrofitted four Rangers at its Christmas Creek mine in Western Australia with autonomous systems created by the company’s Technology and Automation team, to remove the need for …

Starlink is a much-anticipated satellite internet service scheduled to launch for New Zealand and Australian customers later this year. Its aim is to bring affordable, broadband-equivalent data speeds to anyone, no matter where they are located around the world. This could be a game-changer for rural industries like forestry. The service, backed by Elon Musk, is provided through thousands of …

Vinnova, Sweden’s Innovation Agency, together with the forest industry and researchers, invests 20 million SEK (approx. 2 million EURO) on development of an autonomous planting system, the Autoplant. The project is expected to improve forest planting with regard to precision, environmental impact and working environment. Autoplant is the second step in a research program that aims to solve societal challenges …

Invitation for a short survey for academic research surrounding forest inventory metrics and capture. RMIT University, located in Melbourne Australia, is currently conducting a short, anonymous survey surrounding the current requirements and challenges associated with the collection of forest inventory and the opportunities that low-cost 3D imaging technologies may present. It is hoped that this survey will be able to …

Robots help us in many ways – from assembly lines to looking after the elderly. Now they’re turning their attention to combating climate change by helping to plant trees. Milrem Robotics, an Estonian company which started off building autonomous tanks, has developed an autonomous robot forester that can plant and nurture young trees. The new robot planter carries up to …

Forests are crucial for global efforts to prevent dangerous climate change. As the global community works out what to prioritize in this quest against catastrophe, figuring out which forests are gaining and losing carbon – and why – is an important piece of the puzzle. Until now, however, data on carbon gains and losses in global forests has been piecemeal …

Australia will develop a nationally consistent bushfire modelling and prediction capability under an agreement announced between CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, and AFAC, the National Council for Fire and Emergency Services. The partnership involves the development of Spark Operational, a cutting-edge bushfire simulation tool based on CSIRO’s ‘Spark’ fire prediction platform. Fire and emergency services agencies across Australia will be …

Germany’s UP42 has announced that data from the planned Australian LatConnect 60 satellite constellation will be available on its geospatial marketplace platform. Perth-based LatConnect 60 intends to launch a constellation of mid-inclined orbit remote sensing satellites in early 2022. The initial two ‘smart’ small satellites will be equipped with onboard Artificial Intelligence (AI) for data pre-processing and advanced tip-and-cue functionality, …

New Zealand’s tech sector is struggling to get enough skilled staff despite strong job growth and thousands of new tech jobs being created every year, a new survey says. The Kiwi economy is being seriously restricted by a digital skills mismatch during difficult covid times, it says. Digital technology businesses are having problems attracting, developing and retaining people with tech …

Trimble Forestry announced recently that its widely used Log Information Management System (LIMS) now integrates seamlessly with the Connected Forest™ Xchange (CFX). The integration allows load ticket information from LIMS to sync to the cloud-based CFX portal, which can be accessed from any device, any place.   With CFX’s flexibility, easy-to-view dashboards, and mobile accessibility, key operational data, such as electronic …

NOAA has awarded Black Swift Technologies (BST) a contract to develop GPS-denied navigation, enabling Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations for drones in GNSS-denied environments. With nearly 95,000 miles of domestic coastline, NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey faces a daunting task. Under current FAA regulations, unmanned aircraft system (UAS) operators are required to keep their aircraft within visual line of …

A hidden gem within the ForestTECH website is our Video Showcase section. This section highlights new technologies and innovations related to forest managememnt. We are always on the lookout for videos that interest our readers and we now have 50 videos available. The Video Showcase section can be viewed via this link. Here are a couple of our latest additions:

American Robotics, a leading developer of fully-automated commercial drone systems, today became the first company approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate automated drones without human operators on-site. The company’s Scout System™ features advanced acoustic Detect-and-Avoid (DAA) technology that enables its drones to maintain a safe distance from other aircraft at all times. By developing a layered, redundant …

The space age was built on clever materials. The business ends of rocket engines are composed of Inconel, a family of heat-and-corrosion-resistant nickel-chromium alloys developed in the 1940s. The “gold foil” adorning many satellites is, in fact, a form of insulation made from layers of Kapton and metallised Mylar, a pair of artificial polymers from the 1950s and 1960s. SpaceX’s …

The U.S. Department of Commerce has blacklisted DJI. The world’s largest drone manufacturer has been added to the agency’s “Entity” list along with 76 other companies, including other Chinese technology companies and research institutions. As tensions between the U.S. and China increase, DJI has struggled against fears about the security of their platform, and attempts by lawmakers to ban Chinese-made …

Remsoft, a forestry planning and optimization software leader, is partnering with Safe Software FME Certified data integration specialists Locus and Consortech to automate data integration in the Remsoft Operations Cloud. Forest product companies often work within multiple systems, spreadsheets, and different data formats. The resulting data fragmentation hampers efficiency, effective decision-making, and the ability to rapidly respond to changing conditions …

At the end of last year, well over 300 tree crop managers, establishment foresters and remote sensing specialists attended or came in remotely for the ForestTECH 2020 event that was held in Rotorua, New Zealand. In it, for the first time in this region, the key suppliers of mechanised planting equipment out of Europe, local companies that were making modifications …

In a world-first, the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has granted Dawn Aerospace an Unmanned Aircraft Operator Certificate to fly a suborbital spaceplane from a conventional airport. Authorised under Civil Aviation Rule Part 102, Dawn is setting a new precedent for how we access space. Presently, flights will operate without the need for restricted airspace, proving the worlds of …

A Record Global Turnout In the lead up to ForestTECH 2020, most within the industry would have thought that it would have been a very hard (in fact, nigh near impossible) task to get forestry resource and tree crop managers together from across Australasia at any physical event. Despite COVID-19, country border restrictions, tight health and safety requirements for running …

With the introduction of environmental policies comes an increasing need to monitor changes across landscapes. While high revisit satellite data is touted as providing such a solution; it is often difficult to cope with the volumes of data, filter and interpret changes in a structured way. Indufor’s monitoring system, ‘MO’ presents a rapid, scalable approach to landscape-level change detection. ‘MO’ …

A solar-powered, unmanned aircraft is being developed in Christchurch, New Zealand in the hope it will be a game changer for the aerial imaging industry. Kea Aerospace is developing the Kea Atmos aircraft, which has a wingspan of 32m and weighs only 90kg. Covered in solar panels which power three electric motors, the aircraft will be able to fly for …

Dryad Networks is prepping an IoT network of sensors connected via a solar-powered wireless mesh for deployment in forests as an early warning system to detect fires. A German start-up wants to use IoT sensors and a wireless-mesh network to detect forest fires within 10 minutes to an hour of when they start as opposed to the hours or even …

Drones becoming a useful tool in wildfire meteorology, the effort to understand weather that leads to fire risk. As wildfires continue to rage across vast swaths of the western United States, researchers are developing the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to understand the weather systems that lead to the fires’ ignition and spread and to help develop tools to …

Much has been reported on the development and advancements of local research efforts into robotics and automated data capture for forest operations. Elsewhere, USA-based company Treeswift provides an example of how researchers in other parts of the world are embracing the use of robotic tools to help automate forestry, reduce risk for workers, and collect highly accurate data more quickly. …

One benefit of high-revisit satellites is their ability to re-image the same location daily or weekly. In this example, we use temporal satellite observations (2016 to 2020) to track drought impact, using PlanetScope imagery to confirm the change. Working with Scion’s Geomatics team, Indufor has extended the science and developed a monitoring approach that can be used to link satellite …

As wildfires continue to ravage vast swaths of land across the western United States unmanned aerial vehicle operators are stepping up to provide critical services, acting as eyes in the skies in support of firefighting teams on the ground. Flying two hybrid quadrotor (HQ) aircraft manufactured by L3Harris Technologies, Belgrade, Montana-based Bridger Aerospace, has flown some 250 hours in about …

Editors Note: Aerometrex is also a sponsor of ForestTECH 2020 and will present this exciting new innovation in detail at the conference. Aerometrex has just announced that it’s developed a new technology that can determine, in three dimensions, the exact fuel load densities in any bushfire-prone region in Australia. The product is an advance of the company’s existing LIDAR (Light …

Emesent is an innovative Australian data analytics and drone autonomy start-up. The company presented at last year’s ForestTECH 2019 event and will again be presenting at this years ForestTECH 2020 event scheduled to run on 18-19 November. Soon after last year’s ForestTECH event in Rotorua, Scion undertook trials using the Hovermap sensor unit which integrates with a drone flight control …

Lim Geomatics has been included among the winners of the 32nd annual Growth List. The definitive ranking of Canada’s fastest-growing companies was announced on 15 October and is compiled by Canadian Business and Maclean’s magazine. Winners are chosen based on their revenue growth over the last five years. Lim Geomatics ranked 335th out of the 500 most innovative companies in …

An analysis of satellite images has pinpointed individual tree canopies over a large area of West Africa. The data suggest that it will soon be possible, with certain limitations, to map the location and size of every tree worldwide. Terrestrial ecosystems are defined in large part by their woody plants. Grasslands, shrublands, savannahs, woodlands and forests represent a series of …

Planet has released a two-part how-to webinar series to demonstrate two key use cases that Planet data is used for in forest management. The first part covers how to efficiently digitize boundaries of harvested timber areas and the second video covers monitoring the impact of disasters using near-daily imagery. Webinar Part One: Timber Harvesting Leveraging Planet’s Surface Reflectance Basemaps and …

A Kickstarter campaign to empower everyday people to become a part of the global effort against climate change was launched in New Zealand this week. TreeTime, a new tree planting non-profit enterprise, is developing an innovative app which will utilise new drone software to enable donors to track their tree’s journey from seed to maturity. The app gives the assurance …

Brazil is a nation of superlatives. It is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, and home to the largest rainforest, the largest freshwater preserve, and a quarter of the world’s species. It also one of the world’s largest grain producers and a major producer of coffee, sugar, and beef. Brazil’s tropical forests are critically important for biodiversity, …

A group of international scientists from New Zealand and Singapore is collaborating on a three-year project, funded by MBIE, to use data science and remote sensing to automatically model and analyse tree species and their interactions with environment. Singapore, the ‘City in a Garden’, embodies the ‘green city’ concept with over 7 million urban trees covering 700 km2. New Zealand, …

Update: The rockets successfully launched on Saturday 19 September 2020. South Australia’s west coast will roar with the sound of rocket launches this week, as start-up Southern Launch begins its test program with two sub-orbital rockets. It will be a significant moment for Australia’s space industry – the next chapter in a history of rocket launches extending over six decades. …