Editor's note
This week is about keeping forest data current.
Detail usually gets the attention in forestry tech. Finer resolution, more points per square metre, one more sensor on the machine. I think this week's stories are interesting for a different reason. A scan that gets redone often. A map that finally covers the growers who never showed up in a survey. A filing that reaches the agency the same day instead of sitting in an inbox. The value is not that you see more. It is that you see it in time.
I wrote in #038 that direct measurement was starting to replace rough proxies. The next step is harder. It is not enough to measure the right thing once. You have to measure it again before the forest moves on without you.
Axel
WHAT GOT ME THINKING
Seven forestry companies put money into Sweden's third national forest laser scan
Sweden's third national laser scanning of its forests has begun, and for the first time seven forestry companies (SCA, Sveaskog, Södra, Stora Enso, Holmen, Norra Skog and Mellanskog) are putting money in alongside the state, with Skogforsk coordinating. The scan is a government assignment to Lantmäteriet, Skogsstyrelsen and SLU. The data feeds skogliga grunddata, the national base layer that underpins forest planning across the country, from stand to estate to landscape.
Axel's notes: We are scanning the forest again. What stands out this time is that the companies are paying for part of it themselves, and that they asked for it to happen more often rather than in finer detail. I think that is the right call. For most of what I do, knowing roughly how a stand looks this season is worth more than knowing exactly how it looked three years ago. A storm can make last year's data useless. Resolution does not fix that. Frequency does. That changes what I would build. Twenty years of forestry tech has gone into capturing more per hectare. The harder problem now is keeping the base layer current, and getting enough sectors to share the cost so it stays that way. I would rather work from a forest map that gets rebuilt often than one that is detailed and out of date.
New Zealand maps every commercial forest down to one hectare by species and age
New Zealand's forestry agency Te Uru Rakau has commissioned a consortium to build a national database that maps every commercial forest down to one hectare, sorted by species and age, using satellite based machine learning and LiDAR that tells non radiata pine species apart and estimates height and age. The point is the small woodlot owners who never send data into the national survey. Of 1.8 million hectares of exotic forest, close to a quarter million sit in titles under 40 hectares, which is where growers want a clearer picture before choosing what to plant.
Skogshubben launches felling notifications wired straight into the Skogsstyrelsen system
Skogshubben, made by Ecotype, a Swedish startup in forest planning, has officially launched a module for filing felling notifications straight from an existing harvest plan, synced with the updated Nemus version the Swedish Forest Agency released on 29 May.
Data already entered on the stand carries into the notification automatically, validations flag missing or wrong fields before anything is sent, and the system then tracks each case through the agency review, handles document supplements, and emails the team when a status changes.
Idemitsu and Morisora sign a deal to make jet fuel from Japanese wood
Idemitsu Kosan and Morisora Biorefinery signed a memorandum to build a fully domestic supply chain for sustainable aviation fuel made from second generation bioethanol out of Japanese woody biomass, using alcohol to jet technology Idemitsu is still verifying. The two sit inside Project MORISORA, the wood to fuel venture launched in 2023 by Nippon Paper, Sumitomo Corporation and Green Earth Institute, with Japan Airlines, Airbus and Sumitomo Forestry joining through 2025. A demonstration plant at Nippon Paper's Iwanuma mill is set to produce over 1,000 kilolitres a year from 2027.