Remote sensing technologies are enabling more efficient and profitable forestry operations. The latest forest technology conference in Vancouver in early March features practitioners who specialize in helping their forestry clients to see how well these systems work.

A range of knowledgeable and practical forest management experts will deliver insights into this new technology at the ForestTECHX conference in Vancouver on March 6-7th.

A key practical presentation will examine case studies of operational use in BC and California and discuss accuracy and applications of the data.

Forsite has been working with Canadian forest sector clients to maximize their return on investment from LiDAR investments for many years. This has ranged from making timber development more efficient to leveraging vegetation information to improve forest inventories. Their strategic planning forester, Cam Brown, will be discussing case studies of their learnings and successes.

Cam Brown says, “Many of our clients have commented that LiDAR data has ‘removed the blindfold’ from office-based planning and fundamentally changed how they do their business.”

A key area of focus for Forsite has been in the development and application of individual tree inventories that provide incredibly rich descriptions of stands – including detailed timber merchandising information like log number by diameter classes and species.

Brown says, “Our work with Object Raku Technologies to deliver these solutions has proved very successful and rewarding. The ability to leverage ‘cruise-like’ data to inform harvest planning decisions or update strategic (polygonal) forest inventories is very powerful.”

He adds, “Our key operational clients are looking for practical solutions to make their decisions better and faster, not more complicated.”

Using the new systems, they’ve developed, individual tree inventories can also be grown and maintained more easily because the base unit is an individual tree of known species and height. Previous versions limited systems to a 20x20m grid cell containing a range of tree species and heights.

“The widespread application of individual tree inventories in the forest sector will be a giant leap forward in our ability to manage the resource with greater certainty and reduced costs.”

Forsite’s Cam Brown and other application specialists from across Canada, Europe and Australasia will be at the 2018 ForestTECHX conference running on March 6th – 7th at the Executive Airport Plaza Hotel in Richmond, BC.