Dr. Mark Corrao is the Director of Technology at Northwest Management Inc., which is a leader in forestland and environmental management, providing expertise in forestry, technology, wildfire, water resources, wildlife, hazard management and planning. Dr. Corrao joins us from Idaho to share his journey in forestry and how it led to a Ph.D. in soil physics and environmental law, and the development of the company’s ForestView® technology. Currently, ForestView® Lidar and single-tree Digital Inventory® products cover over 4 million acres of commercial forestland within 17 States and one Canadian province.

Taylor Griffith, Founder of TRACT, joins us from Athens, Georgia, USA to talk about how he leveraged his background in financial technologies to develop an all-in-one forestry procurement, accounting, and logistics solution for the forest industry. By streamlining data and processes TRACT gives employees additional hours, days, and weeks every year to work smarter not harder, which means more productivity, efficiency, and value for a forest business. Come listen to Taylor talk about his journey in entrepreneurship and innovation in forestry, and vision for the forest industry.

Bruce Ripley, Project Manager with the Strategic Innovation group at Manulife (Hancock Forest Management), joins us from the Pacific Northwest in the USA to talk about his multi-decade career in forestry and forest technology. Come listen to what Bruce is doing at Manulife with airborne lidar to name one million individual trees and learn what Bruce will be up to in the fall to drive and accelerate innovation in the forestry community. Bruce reminds us that if you don’t have data, you can’t measure or quantify anything.

Dr. Elias Ayrey, Co-Founder and Head Scientist at Renoster, joins us from the Pacific Northwest in the US to talk about how Renoster uses remote sensing to determine carbon sequestration value for forest offset projects. Come listen to learn what Renoster has to do with rhinos and what deep transparency for carbon credit projects means to them.

Dr. Mark Norris-Rogers, Principal Consultant at RasterMatics International, joins us from outside of Cape Town in South Africa. Mark gives us an overview of commercial forestry in South Africa and shares his experiences from having worked in forestry over the last 30 years. Come listen to why Mark believes that the EO space is being driven by sensors, software and connectivity, and that the key to success is to not be afraid to ask for help and never stop learning.

Olle Gelin is the CEO and Co-Founder of AirForestry, which is a company that thins forests in a completely new way, namely from the air. AirForestry has developed their own electric drone and harvesting head to thin trees and fly them out to roadside from the air. Come listen to Olle describe a future where thinning operations are fossil-free and why he sees the world comprised of only possibilities.

Brendan Moore is a Project Manager at The Lyme Timber Company, a private timberland investment organization founded in 1976, and joins us from Vermont, USA. He shares with us why folks with the most challenging forests are the ones adopting technology the fastest and how that translates into Lyme acquiring over 700,000 acres of lidar data and adoption of earth observation for change detection. Come listen to Brendan explain why despite all the great forest technology available to foresters today, it still comes down to the people and the importance of appreciating and recognizing those working for you. The value of spending time with the field foresters who will be ultimately using the new data and tools cannot be overstated.

Rolf Schmitz is the co-CEO and co-founder of CollectiveCrunch and while normally based out of Germany, joins us from Espoo, Finland. In his words, modelling nature is incredibly complex but also fun and beautiful. CollectiveCrunch originated from the idea that it could make a difference by combining climate and geo data with state-of-the-art analytics to develop new insights. In this conversation, Rolf talks about how cut-to-length harvester data can be used to calibrate models, the importance to focus on outcomes and not the black box nature of AI, the potential of blockchain for tokenizing carbon and much more. If you want to know who is the Linda in CollectiveCrunch’s Linda Forest, Linda Scout and Linda Planet solutions, come have a listen.

Alex Bilyk is the Forest Inventory Innovation Manager at Silvacom and joins us from the company’s Thunder Bay office. In this podcast, Alex talks about the state of lidar forest inventory across Canada, how opening access to satellite data archives, such as Landsat, has allowed us to go back in time and ask some interesting questions, and importance of open data in driving innovation. Other topics discussed include the future of drones, hyperspectral remote sensing, and fusion of harvesting machine data with lidar to tighten up utilization. Come listen to what Alex means when he says that when you Google forester, you get Subaru, and why we need to change perceptions of the forestry profession.

Brandon Craft is a Technical Services Forester at Forest Resource Consultants (FRC) and joins us from Macon, GA. Immediately after completing his master’s degree in forestry from Auburn University, Brandon launched his own forest service provider firm and built it up to a seven-person firm before deciding to join FRC to help with its digital transformation. Come listen to Brandon’s thoughts on how COVID-19 dashboards may have been a trigger event for digital transformation in organizations and the importance of geospatial strategy, change management, and executive sponsors in realizing success. While Brandon sees digital transformation well underway in many forestry companies, he reminds us that for some, it is more about digital birth as opposed to transformation.