The Digital Forester

By day, Dr. John Lindsay is a geomatics professor at the University of Guelph and the rest of time, he is an entrepreneur working as co-founder of Whitebox Geospatial Inc., which is a company that develops innovative geospatial software built on open-source. Come learn more about the WhiteboxTools Open Core, which is the foundation of the Whitebox platform and comprised of over 460 open-source tools, and how it can be used to process and analyze geospatial data of all kinds.

Formerly with the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Dr. Dale Fried is the Founder and CEO of 3DEO Inc., which builds upon US Department of Defense investments in Geiger-mode lidar totaling well over $100M spanning more than a decade. The company’s vision is to bring the advanced capabilities of Geiger-mode lidar technology to bear on problems of interest to its commercial and government customers. Fast to 3DEO means 10-30 million 3D measurements per second and thousands of detectors working in parallel. Come listen to what “fast” means in the context of forestry.

We kick off 2023 with Cakey Worthington, VP of Carbon Operations and Zach Pardue, Manager of Forest Information and Geospatial Systems from Anew. With the merger of Element Markets and Bluesource to create Anew, the company introduced "Climate as a Service” – an approach that offers companies and organizations a seamless solution to navigating the increasingly complex landscape of environmental responsibility. Since inception of its legacy companies, Anew has transacted over 150 million tonnes of carbon, has provided more than 240 million diesel gallons equivalent of renewable fuels for transportation, and has developed projects on over 3.5 million acres of forest and farmland.

Dr. Elizabeth Hunter is the COO and Co-Founder of Treeswift, a company that has built a new data and monitoring system for the natural world by pushing the frontier in robotic and machine learning technology. Treeswift has designed high-resolution sensors which can operate underneath the forest canopy and replace traditional forest measurement tools, and when combined with drones and backpacks, can be used to cruise forests for carbon and timber.

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.