Editor's note
A drone that stops at single seedlings. That is what the Hirvidrone trial in Finland is testing: an AI model picks out each pine seedling from a survey flight, and the spray drone puts its dose of moose repellent on that plant and moves on.
I have been waiting for this, and I know many of you have too. Drones in the forest have mostly looked or spread: inventory flights and, as #066 showed, boron fertiliser over whole stands. Treating one plant at a time is where the drone starts doing the job a person with a backpack sprayer does.
It is still a trial under a special permit, and results come in spring 2027. The step I would most like to see next is pairing it with single-tree data at seedling level. If the drone knows which seedlings are meant to become the main stems, it can protect those and leave the rest as browse for the moose.
Axel
Finnish trial sends AI-guided drones to spray moose repellent on pine seedlings
The Finnish Forest Centre, with the research institute Luke and the Finnish Geospatial Institute, is testing drones that spray moose repellent on single pine seedlings. A survey flight trains an AI model to find each seedling, then a spray drone flies a planned route and stops only there, instead of an owner walking the stand with a backpack sprayer. Aerial spraying is banned in the EU outside trials, so this runs under a special permit, and the project expects results in spring 2027.
Hyne Timber adds X-ray to log scanning at its Tuan mill
Hyne Timber is installing a third MiCROTEC Logeye scanner at Tuan, Queensland's largest sawmill, and this one adds X-ray. MiCROTEC says it is its first Logeye in Australia to measure log density, using a model trained on CT scans of real logs to read defects inside the stem. The mill can then sort logs on what is inside them, not only on shape, before the first cut. MiCROTEC (last seen in #012 at Södra's Värö mill) expects it running by late 2026.
Swedish Forest Agency merges three map services into Skogens karta
The Swedish Forest Agency has merged three of its map services into one, Skogens karta. Tree height and timber volume from laser scanning, nature and cultural values, protected forest, watercourses, landslide risk and storm or fire damage now sit in one map that also works on a phone. One service instead of three means fewer places to look and fewer links to maintain.
Esri Deutschland maps Germany's dominant tree species
Esri Deutschland has mapped Germany's dominant tree species, shared on LinkedIn by Geo-ICT Training Center on 5 October. The post names no source, but the classes appear to match the Thünen Institute's national map, built from Sentinel-2 satellite images taken in 2017 and 2018. If so, it shows the forest before most of the bark beetle losses the post points to in the Harz and Thuringia. Even so, a whole country's species mix, open for anyone to zoom into, is the kind of data access forestry should want more of.
Biometria's VIOL starts rejecting unversioned integrations on 2 November
From 2 November, Biometria's VIOL, the hub that carries Sweden's timber measurement and trade data, will reject any integration call that does not state which version of the interface it uses. The check has been live in the test environment since 1 September. Any system that has not been updated by then loses every transaction to VIOL, so forest companies, mills and their software vendors should test now.
