Home About Research Publications People What's New Links Contact Us   UW   Update on the Precision Forestry Cooperative January 26, 2001 Radio Frequency Identification of Trees Identification of individual trees is now part of forestry and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has great promise of doing this inexpensively. Currently the Precision Forestry Cooperative is working with the Department of Natural Resources Small Forest Landowner Office to develop a tagging system to verify trees in riparian easements are conserved. We are very excited about the interest in turning this technology into a commercial venture; we have been in discussions with the venture capital firm, WRF Capital. Forest Visualization, Design, and Planning Using specialized software and large databases about the trees in a forest, computer synthesized images are being generated to explore and communicate the appearance of forests under a variety of management options. Precision Forestry is continuing to investigate the current technology for further development and application. A January 14th Seattle Times article about timber harvesting and visual impacts highlights the need for this technology. LIght Detection And Ranging LIDAR is a laser based remote-sensing system that scans the forest from by aircraft. Precision Forestry is now evaluating data collected in Capital Forest, near Olympia, to develop methods for extracting precision topographic, stream, and vegetation information. We currently are working on identify individual trees, as well as forest structure. We believe this will lead to the identification of small areas of specific habitat within large forests, especially considering the low cost per acre. LIDAR is also very promising for the identification and classification of forest by fire hazard. Navigation Under the Tree Canopy Precision Forestry is in the middle of research using Global Positioning System (GPS) in combination with Inertial Navigation Systems to provide accurate navigation anywhere in a forest. We this is critical to practical forest operations while protecting water quality and forest habitat. Forests & Fish Rules and Precision Forestry Newly adopted rules from the Forests & Fish agreement will require much more intensive information about commercial forests. We are looking at how tools like RFID, LIDAR, navigation, and visualization can help to implement Forests & Fish to protect our resources. People The Precision Forestry Cooperative is hiring a permanent Director who will be a member of the faculty and provide leadership to cooperating faculty from Forest Resources, Engineering and other related campus units. We expect this position will be fill by Autumn. Doug St. John was hired in July 2000 as the Executive Director to manage and support the cooperative. Doug comes to us with considerable engineering experience with private industry. Executive Advisory Board We have assembled a diverse board with representatives from industry, regulating agencies, USDA Forest Service, tribes, conservation groups, and small landowners. The board will provide guidance and help maintain the cooperatives focus. We are committed to the cooperative aspect of our program to assure success in creating economic benefits for the state. The First International Precision Forestry Symposium The Cooperative will hold the First International Precision Forestry Symposium June 18 & 19, 2001 in Seattle. The interest, and support from partners, has been terrific. Working With the Rural Technology Initiative (RTI) The Precision Forestry Cooperative and the Rural Technology Initiative complement each other. The close working relationship allows technologies developed to be quickly transferred to Washington's rural area where they have their greatest impact.   The Precision Forestry Home Page is provided by the College of Forest Resources. © 2000 - University of Washington, Precision Forestry Cooperative, including all photographs and images unless otherwise noted.