Northern Hardwoods Research Institute Inc. working with students to help forestry go high tech
by CM Staff
The research is being propelled through an internship program funded by Mitacs, a not-for-profit organization that fosters growth and innovation in Canada.
EDMUNDSTON — The Northern Hardwoods Research Institute Inc., launched in 2012 to try and stimulate innovation in Canada’s multibillion-dollar forest products sector, is trying to modernize forest management by developing new tools for woodlot owners, harvesters and forest professionals. Now, their work is in trying to digitally transform an older industry, and also enabling foresters to work smarter by allowing them to precisely learn the details of every single tree, before they ever set foot in a forest.
The research is being propelled through an internship program funded by Mitacs, a not-for-profit organization that fosters growth and innovation in Canada and provides students with unique opportunities to work on real-world, leading-edge projects.
In order to advance its newest innovation — a breakthrough system that uses drones equipped with light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors, along with big data and artificial intelligence (AI), to precisely map forest sections in 3D so optimal forest management practices can be used — NHRI is working with Mitacs interns.
“We can no longer rely on old ways of doing things, where we assume every forester or operator of a harvesting machine knows the forest in precise detail,” said Gaetan Pelletier, NHRI Executive Director. “We still need people on the ground, but they need to be empowered with better information.”
The drone system is part of NHRI’s multi-year digital transformation project called Digital Timberlands 20/20, aimed at closing gaps in the emerging field of precision forestry. As the drone equipped with the special laser scanning technology flies over a forest, it penetrates the canopy to collect thousands of data points to describe the geographical area, making it possible to extract precise, single-tree metrics.
NHRI is currently working with more than 25 small operators in Atlantic Canada and Quebec to apply its solutions in the field. Early results indicate that by precisely pinpointing which trees to harvest and when, productivity can increase by as much as 15 percent and the cost of producing raw products can be reduced by as much as 10 percent, giving Canadian foresters a competitive edge in a global market that’s facing similar hardwood challenges, according to Mitacs.
