Editor's note
Drones are starting to come with numbers.
Most of the case for flying is still made in adjectives. Two stories below put figures against it instead. A Korean costing lands a fixed-wing survey near 7 dollars a hectare against nearly 40 for a walking crew, and in Finland forest owners are picking a drone over a helicopter or a ground crew for fertilisation work, with the Forest Centre saying spreading has got faster and the work cheaper.
Neither case is clean. The Korean walking cost is a labour norm rather than a crew anyone timed, and the Finnish agency attaches no number to either claim. The direction is right even so, and arguing over the size of a figure beats arguing over whether one exists.
This is an area we will keep following closely.
Axel
Sweden gets national maps of forest age and site index for the first time
Both properties now cover every Swedish forest, free in the map service of Skogsstyrelsen, the national forest agency. The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences built them by holding two national laser scans from the mapping agency Lantmäteriet against the field plots of the National Forest Inventory, with Mats Nilsson and Alex Appiah Mensah leading the work. The researchers name the limit themselves: the estimate holds to roughly 80 years, then starts reading old forest as younger than it is.
Skogforsk builds a bucking tool that runs on a forest company's own data
The Swedish forestry research institute has the platform finished and out with Södra and SCA for evaluation. It simulates what a given bucking policy will yield from the records a harvester already produces, so the cut can be matched to what the industry inside that catchment actually buys. The mill gets the other half: earlier and more accurate information about the timber on its way in, enough to plan production around. One percent more yield would mean 365,000 cubic metres of extra sawn wood a year.
Drones now fly much of Finland's private-forest boron fertilisation
Owners are choosing a drone over a helicopter or a ground crew. The Finnish Forest Centre puts the growth in boron work down to development in both the drones and the fertiliser, and says spreading has got faster and the work cheaper. Boron has gone from roughly two thirds of health fertilisation applications a year ago to past four fifths this year.
A Korean study prices three ways to find a vine infestation
A fixed-wing drone came out near 7 dollars a hectare where boundaries have to be drawn on a map, against nearly 40 on foot, though that second figure is a labour norm rather than a crew anyone timed. Driving the roads was cheaper still, and coarser. No method wins outright: it turns on how scattered the growth is and how precise an answer the job needs. Cost was the only thing compared.