The Digital Forester

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.

Bruce MacArthur is the CEO of Tesera Systems and joins us from the foothills in between Cochrane and Calgary, Alberta. He started his career in forestry by working in sawmills at the age of 14 years old, which in turn led to the pursuit of a forestry degree at UBC. With staff in BC, Alberta, Nova Scotia and Thailand, Tesera is a remote first company and has been in business for over 24 years with clients in Canada, USA, Brazil, Europe and South Africa. Come listen to learn more about Tesera’s High Resolution Inventory Solutions (HRIS), which deploys advanced machine learning and data analytics to produce reliable forestry and natural resource inventories, and Bruce’s thoughts on open source technology, forest inventory, and climate and its impact on forest systems. Bruce reminds us that ultimately, sustainability is tied to good information.

Dr. Cassidy Rankine is the Western Canadian Account Executive at Planet and joins us from Vernon, BC to share his thoughts on the state of earth observation (EO) in forestry. With a Ph.D. in remote sensing and forest ecology and succession from the University of Alberta, Dr. Rankine was also the co-founder of a drone startup company prior to joining Planet. Come listen to hear Dr. Rankine’s thoughts on how drones have democratized remote sensing, what agile aerospace means, the importance of data fusion and harmonization, Planet’s work with sub-50cm Pelican and 400-band hyperspectral Carbon Mapper missions, and why pancakes are ever so important at Planet.

Scot McQueen, Senior Technology Officer at the Forest Stewardship Council, joins us from Olympia, Washington to share with us how he is leveraging technology to drive positive and impactful change in forestry around the world. What does Esri, Planet, Tableau, DocuSign, Amazon Web Services, and Google all have in common? They are part of the FSC Technology Consortium and working together to solve some of the toughest problems in forestry. As an example, come listen to Scot describe how FSC is tackling the chain of custody problem through blockchain technology. You’re in for some goosebumps with this one!

Adam Dick is a Science Advisor at the Canadian Wood Fibre Centre, Canadian Forest Service and joins us from Fredericton. Adam was one of the champions that brought lidar enhanced forest inventory (EFI) to New Brunswick, which has resulted in the province having wall-to-wall lidar coverage and EFI predictions. From academia, to industry, to provincial and federal government roles, Adam shares his thoughts on his current research focus on digital supply chains in forestry and the opportunities that lie ahead of us. Adam exemplifies how the profile of a forester has evolved to include more digital skills.

Albrecht von Ruffer, CEO of SKYLAB, joins us from Hamburg, Germany. As a biologist by training and an entrepreneur with a successful exit already, Albrecht founded SKYLAB in 2017 to leverage advances that had been made in drone technology and photogrammetry software to solve day-to-day forestry problems. Since then, SKYLAB has developed a web-based SaaS platform powered by AI that can use drone- or satellite-based remotely sensed data for wall-to-wall forest inventory and monitoring. Albrecht reminds us that making stands more productive on a long-term basis is where the value lies.

Dr. Guoliang Liu, President of aiTree Ltd., calls in from China while on a business trip to talk about his journey over the last 30 years bringing his vision of a digital forest to reality. aiTree’s Forest Simulation Optimization System (FSOS) technology uses artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing technologies to solve the complicated demand and supply problems. Come listen to learn how Dr. Liu envisions predicting the future using a digital forest that is always running.