{"id":4834,"date":"2017-04-19T20:42:45","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T20:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/nature-conservancy-gives-forest-management-a-digital-makeover.html"},"modified":"2017-04-19T20:42:45","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T20:42:45","slug":"nature-conservancy-gives-forest-management-a-digital-makeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/nature-conservancy-gives-forest-management-a-digital-makeover.html","title":{"rendered":"Nature Conservancy gives forest management a digital makeover"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Keeping a forest healthy often means deciding what to do tree by tree and acre by acre. That\u2019s easy enough with a square mile of it, but what about a thousand? The Nature Conservancy is working on tools<\/a> that will make it easy for park services, fire control, and conservationists to keep entire forests alive, thriving and \u2014 you know, not on fire.<\/p>\n

Forest management is a complicated industry, but for our purposes what matters is that this part it is done in a pretty old-school way.<\/p>\n

One approach has someone walking through the forest, scoping things out, and using a can of spray paint to designate certain trees one by one to be cut down or left behind. Nice to have a personal touch, but not exactly quick to execute.<\/p>\n

Another has an expert marking up a map with \u201cprescriptions\u201d for each area: what types of trees to cut, what to leave, etc. But not only does this lack the detail of the previous approach, but the loggers who are to cut the trees will move more slowly as they rely on their discretion to determine what fits the prescription\u2019s bill, or argue over which zone they\u2019re in.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a situation where technology actually can come to the rescue. Neil Chapman at Nature Conservancy is leading a project that aims to make this part of forestry simpler, cheaper, and faster. And with the devastation caused by wildfires recently, it\u2019s not merely a question of healthy forests any more, but of preventing serious disasters.<\/p>\n

Cutting delays<\/h2>\n

\u201cNorthern Arizona is home to the largest continuous Ponderosa pine forest in the country, and we\u2019ve had a million acres of it burn up in catastrophic wildfires over the last 15 years,\u201d said Chapman in an interview with TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

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Workers marking trees on their tablets in the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cForestry practices need to be scaled up to deal with the problem. But they do not have the time or the money to be painting the trees on 50,000 acres a year. So we said, there has to be something we can design that will let forestry increase that pace, while still relying on boots on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resulting Digital Restoration Guide combines the directness of painting with the scalability of prescription.<\/p>\n

Essentially, a forestry worker will walk (or ATV) around as before observing the forest directly. \u201cBut instead of having a paint can, they have a tablet in their hands,\u201d said Chapman.<\/p>\n

They can note the locations of individual trees or groups of them with GPS coordinates, but they don\u2019t need to tag every one. Instead, after getting the gist of an area, they can make a little polygon on the tablet\u2019s map that has all the details.<\/p>\n

This data can be adjusted after the fact, archived, and sent to harvesters, who can consult it from an in-cab tablet. (You can see the app in the image at top.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Not only are they given more specific instructions and better granularity, but the tablet will also record the exact location, time, and diameter (among other things) of felled trees. This saves time on the back end \u2014 much less paperwork \u2014 and lets harvesters track progress more easily to boot.<\/p>\n

This is important, Chapman said, because the forestry service is very particular about how its trees are taken care of, far more so than city or county authorities.<\/p>\n

Tech among the trees<\/h2>\n

A pilot deployment on 327 acres found that, compared with painting trees directly, the digital prescription method cost less than half as much and was five or six times faster. Productivity was similar to the old prescription methods, which Chapman portrayed as a victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf in these early stages we can keep up with DxP on city and state land\u2026 Forestry is much more demanding,\u201d he said, something that plays to digital prescription\u2019s strengths. And that isn\u2019t even taking into account the considerable benefits of the workflow in tracking and ease of use.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cAfter the markers go through, our staff is able to calculate the size, interspace, tree numbers\u2026 in the past they used to have to go out and take samples.\u201d<\/p>\n

They have had to modify the interface and hardware in response to feedback, for instance upping the power of the tablets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turned out some of the maps were pushing the limit of the processor speed on the tablets we were using. Loggers were zooming in and out of a 300-megabyte image and it wasn\u2019t going fast enough,\u201d Chapman said. \u201cIt\u2019s better now. I mean, you cant be sitting there in your cab waiting for an image to render.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lidar and drones, perennial favorites when it comes to crossing over between the digital and real worlds, are also in play.<\/p>\n

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    \u201cWe\u2019ve been looking into how to use lidar for the planning and monitoring stages,\u201d he said. \u201cNormally we\u2019d have to go out and do time consuming ground truthing. Using lidar or structure from motion [another 3D imaging technique], if we have images of 50,000 acres, then images after we cut those acres, we don\u2019t need to go out there and use ground data.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Fixed-wing and multirotor UAVs are in the mix, the former for larger surveying missions and the latter for monitoring smaller areas and rapid ground truth.<\/p>\n

    The pilot studies impressed the Forest Service enough that the tech has been okayed for use on 5,000 acres in the Coconino National Forest and 3,800 acres in Kaibab National forest; it\u2019s part of the ongoing Four Forest Restoration Initiative. The former has already been mapped and the test will be the deployment of the enhanced harvesting teams to the areas designated using the new tools.<\/p>\n

    If this catches on, and it really ought to, it could drastically improve the efficiency of the rangers and loggers who care for our forests. You can follow the project\u2019s progress over at Nature Conservancy\u2019s site<\/a>, or at Arizona\u2019s 4FRI page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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    \t\t\tFeatured Image: Mark Skalny \/ The Nature Conservancy<\/small><\/p>\n

    Article source: https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2017\/04\/19\/nature-conservancy-gives-forest-management-a-digital-makeover\/?ncid=rss<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Keeping a forest healthy often means deciding what to do tree by tree and acre by acre. That\u2019s easy enough with a square mile of it, but what about a <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-4834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-networking-and-communication","tag-network-and-communication"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t