Well, welcome everyone to the 2022
Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative Conference.
Let's hope everyone enjoys their time here
and the weather holds out
until we're able to
either settle in for the night,
or get safely home.
I'm Justin Perry.
I'm the chief of the
Bureau of Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health
with the Division of Lands and Forests
in the Department of Environmental Conservation
at New York State.
(audience laughing)
It's my pleasure to be kicking off our conference today
with a theme of advances in forest science
thinking especially about
the role of innovation and technology in forest management.
Technology plays an increasingly important role
in forest ecosystem work,
and I'm excited about the thoughtful and critical lens
we'll be bringing to this topic
throughout the session today.
I invite you to reflect
on how technology and innovation contribute to your work,
as well as the limitations and challenges
in incorporating new technologies into this work.
I look to the future of the FEMC.
I see growth and new opportunities.
The FEMC has solidified its staff
after a period of transition
and has continued its important work
across the region during this time.
A special thank you to Elissa Schuett
for taking on the role of acting director
during this transition period
and keeping the lights on.
In the past year,
each state had a state partnership committee meeting,
where they helped identify the priorities for the regions,
from which we've selected our regional projects
for the next year.
Monitoring the impacts of recreation on forest ecosystems
and exploring trends in tree mortality
as a response to disturbance drivers.
Don't go away after the plenary sessions,
you'll hear those updates.
Thank you to all the experts and leaders in the region
who are helping to build up and sustain the cooperative
and to the forest service
for its continued support of the program.
Through the FEMC priority setting process,
next January,
the FEMC committee
will be further aligning
the Forest Health monitoring mission of FEMC
to the work being done across the region,
and we think it will pay great dividends
in securing this program into the future.
We must acknowledge Senator Leahy,
his tireless advocacy for long-term environmental monitoring
has gotten us here.
We are indebted to that investment
and will work tirelessly to make good on that effort,
particularly in light of his retirement.
We'll be continuing to develop and strengthen
our relationship with the congressional delegations
for all of our partner states
to ensure long-term support of FEMC and its mission.
I would also like to thank
our conference planning committee,
Jess Wikle, Alana Russell, Mathias Sirch,
Jen Pontius, Colin Byer, and Elissa Schuett.
Thank you all for your excellent work
in developing the theme and plenary presenters
for this year's conference.
The future of FEMC is looking bright
with many opportunities ahead,
so take advantage of the discussions today
to get inspired and get connected.
And thank you for being here.
It's been a long time.
And with that I'd like to introduce Allison Adams,
the new director for the FEMC.
Allison comes to us from Lake Champlain Sea Grant
and UVM extension,
where she served as the watershed forestry coordinator,
developing and running a program
that facilitates research, communication, and collaboration
related to riparian forest restoration and management.
She has a master's degree from UVM
and is currently completing her PhD.
Her scholarship ranges
from remote sensing and landscape modeling
of forest cover change,
forest fragmentation, and carbon storage,
to examinations of the ways in which environmental change
affects individual relationships with nature
in terms of its values,
like identity, heritage, and sense of place.
We're excited to have her on board
and I'll hand it off to her.
(audience clapping)
Thank you Justin,
and thank you to everyone who's here.
We have more than 230 people
who are registered for this conference
in person and virtually,
and it's really exciting
that this is happening in person
for the first time since 2019.
I'm thrilled that we're able to be together
in the space this year
and I'm also excited to have a chance to introduce myself
to those of you I haven't met yet,
and also to share a few quick words,
hopefully quick, about the status of FEMC.
But first I wanna start by acknowledging
that the campus of the University of Vermont
sits within a place of gathering and exchange
shaped by water and stewarded by ongoing generations
of indigenous peoples,
in particular the Western Abenaki.
Acknowledging the relations
between water, land, and people
is in harmony with the mission of the University of Vermont.
Acknowledging the serious and significant impacts
of our histories on indigenous peoples and their homelands
is a part of the university's ongoing work
of teaching, research, and engagement,
and is an essential reminder of our past
and our interconnected futures
for the many of us gathered on this land.
UVM respects the indigenous knowledge
interwoven in this place
and commits to uplifting
the indigenous peoples and cultures
present on this land and within our community.
And I encourage everyone to think about
how their work exists
in relation to the indigenous peoples
who have lived, and continue to live
and steward the land in the northeast.
We've set up a station in the fireplace lounge
for you to explore an online map
of indigenous territories in the region
and also add to a list we're compiling
of the name of tribe, or tribes, on whose land you work.
So please do take the time to stop by there today
and spend a little time thinking about that
and add to that list.
Next,
I wanna acknowledge and thank the amazing group of staff
based at FEMC,
that made all of this year's accomplishments a reality
while weathering a lot of transitions on our team,
including the departure of Jim Duncan.
In my short time as the new director of FEMC,
I can tell how lucky I am to get to work with all of you
and appreciate everything you do
to make FEMC what it is.
We couldn't,
and we also couldn't do any of this without our partners.
So thank you to the dozens of you
who have contributed to state and regional projects,
monitoring and advising FEMC this past year.
You really helped make this a true cooperative.
Speaking of state and regional projects,
now is the fun part
where I get to brag about
just a few of the highlights
from the amazing work FEMC did this past year
that I was really not a part of at all.
So, as I expect everyone in this room knows,
dear browse has a really significant impact
on forest regeneration across much of the Northeast.
And this year we completed a literature review
and tested a range of methods
to provide recommendations
to monitor the impacts of dear browse across the region.
And we'll be continuing to collect data this year
to refine and finalize those recommendations,
including providing information
about the time and expense required
to execute the field methods we tested.
And we hope this will be helpful
to many of you sitting in the audience today.
We've also continued to expand
our regional monitoring program
and we completed monitoring in New York
for the first time this past summer.
And in the past year
we've also seen an expansion
in our partnership efforts and projects.
I think one thing I really wanna highlight
is that we're on the brink of releasing
the Northeastern Forest Inventory Network, or NEFIN,
which is a database and online web tool
that will increase accessibility and usability
of forest inventory data.
And if you wanna learn more about that,
Zana Wolf will be giving a talk about it
in the tools and techniques
contributed talk session this morning.
So be sure to check that out.
This year we also awarded
more than a hundred thousand dollars in FEMC funding
to six ecosystem monitoring fund projects,
and we're looking forward to releasing the RFP
for the next round of awards in February.
I also wanna thank our nine state coordinators
for their work on FEMC projects.
Looking to 2023,
and as Justin mentioned,
we will continue last year's regional project
monitoring the impact of recreation on forest ecosystems
and we'll be starting a new regional project
examining how trends in tree mortality
interact with forest disturbances.
We will also be continuing to develop and deliver
state specific projects.
There are also several new developments in the FEMC
that I wanted to share.
So, shortly after I stepped into the director position,
Elissa Schuett accepted our new program manager position
and we're thrilled to have her in that role.
Elissa has expertise in both ecological research
and stakeholder engagement,
with experience doing long-term monitoring
in a range of ecosystems
from temperate forest to arctic aquatic systems.
And she told me before this talk
that that does not even begin to scratch the surface
of the range of ecosystems that she's worked in.
In addition to her academic background
in biology and applied ecology,
Elissa is trained in science communication,
impact and evaluation,
and community engagement.
Before joining the FEMC,
she worked as the communications manager
and research coordinator for Lake Champlain SEA Grant.
So clearly there's a SEA grant to FEMC pipeline,
and we thank SEA Grant
for all of their donations of staff to our staff.
She also worked for
the Northeastern States Research Cooperative
and Watersheds Consulting associates.
Elissa first joined the FEMC team in 2020.
That's why it says we sort of welcome her.
We're very excited to have her.
She's just already here.
She was our community manager,
and then most recently has served as the interim director.
And thank you so much for that work Elissa.
We're really excited to leverage
this new leadership structure
to increase our capacity for outreach
and expansion of the network,
and Elissa and I are looking forward
to thinking creatively about how we can continue to broaden
FEMC's reach and impact
over the coming year and beyond.
At the same time,
we have a member of our staff
who will soon be moving on from FEMC.
In fact, today's her last day.
Alyx Belisle, our data archivist,
has accepted a position
with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation
after three years with us.
We've been really lucky to have her for so long,
helping to maintain and improve
our data storage and management systems,
and jumping in to to learn how to
troubleshoot issues with meteorological stations.
She has lots of great stories about that.
You should be sure to ask her if you find her today.
And a lot more than that, too.
So Alyx, thank you for your dedication,
for your energy, for your hard work,
and we wish you the best in your next step.
We also have several state coordinators
who have retired or moved on to new positions
in the past year,
including Jerry Carlson in New York,
John Horton in New Hampshire,
and Jeff Ward in Connecticut.
Although we've somehow gotten to continue to work with Jeff,
even after his retirement,
we hope he'll keep doing that.
But we're not holding our breath.
We thank all three of them for their work with
and support of the FEMC.
Behind all of this our funders
continue to provide an impressive commitment to the effort,
which in turn allows us to leverage funding for more sources
for additional projects.
Thank you for this ongoing support.
This year, we especially wanna recognize Senator Leahy,
who has provided tremendous support for the FEMC
for many years,
and who will be deeply missed
when he retires very soon.
I think it's evidence of his commitment to FEMC,
that he sent us a video to share with you today.
So I'm gonna play that.
I'm very pleased to be speaking
to the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative 2022.
This conference has one of my last Vermont speeches
as a US Senator,
but the work you do
is something I've believed in
and supported for decades,
and I wanted to speak here.
Your work as scientists
has helped my work as a legislator.
In the late 1980s,
it became clear we didn't fully understand
the conditions and the pace of change
in Northern Forest across northern New England and New York.
More and more land was being developed,
large timber holdings were being broken apart and sold.
So in 1988,
one of my good friends,
Senator Warren Rudman in New Hampshire,
I sponsored with him
legislation directing
the National Forest Service to study
and report to Congress
on the condition of the forest
across Northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
We were one Republican and one Democrat
saying this goes way beyond politics.
And the Northern Forest Land Study was published in 1990.
And it identified both threats to,
but also opportunities for,
the Northern Forest.
That study made it clear to me
that we needed a much better understanding
of forest resources and the ecosystems.
We needed more information about how the forest was changing
if we were going to protect it.
So with that in mind,
I worked to establish the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative
in 1990.
Later, with my full support,
it was expanded to work regionally
across the region
as the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative,
as we'd envisioned in the Northern Vermont land study.
This study helped me know what best work
to use on land conservation
and northern forest economies.
And I needed that knowledge
as I pushed for the Forest Legacy Act
and the Community Open Space Act
in the Northern Border Regional Commission.
Another legislation I point to with pride.
In the late 1980s,
we were most concerned with acid rain,
and threats for accelerating land development
and declining forest economy base.
30 years ago,
I couldn't imagine how quickly
the emerging threat of climate change would accelerate
or of the devastating toll
that invasive species would take in the coming decades.
We can only anticipate and respond to new challenges if,
if we understand the condition
and ecosystem of the Northern forest.
That is why
I am so proud of your ecosystem monitoring work
and why it's so important.
I can't thank you enough for what you do.
But I also want to thank the US Forest Service.
You've shepherded Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative,
your support's been critical,
along with the assistance of state foresters
across the region
and the University of Vermont.
So let's keep this tradition of cooperation going.
I've included funding for the cooperative
in the FY 2023 budget.
I want it to pass because I'm confident
that your research work is so important and valuable
and that way the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative
will continue its work for many years to come.
Marcell and I wish you the best.
(audience clapping)
So we have a full day of activities for you.
So I don't wanna take up much more time.
The last thing I wanna mention
before we move on to the plenary speaker
is that this meeting is approved for three SAFCFE credits.
So if you wanna receive credits
and haven't already signed up for that,
please do be sure to fill out the sign-in sheet
at the registration table
and then we'll have the certificate ready for you
at the end of the day.
Okay, enough about us,
it's time to shift gears to the plenary.
I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Colin Byer to the stage
as our plenary speaker for today.
Colin is an associate professor of ecology at SUNY ESF
and has long been an engaged partner of FEMC,
including serving
on the New York State Partnership Committee.
He's a broadly trained ecologist,
interested in the fate of forest ecosystems
and landscapes,
including people
and our economic, political, and cultural institutions
in a rapidly changing world.
He holds a PhD in systems ecology
from the University of Alaska Fairbanks,
and a master from Virginia Tech in Forest Ecology.
Since 2018,
Colin has served as lead PI
of long-term ecosystem monitoring
at Huntington Forest in the Adirondacks,
one of the original cohort of NADP site sites
started in 1978,
and as Director
of the Climate and Applied Forest Research Institute.
Colin is a core member
of ESF Center for Native Peoples in the environment,
led by Dr. Robin Kimmer,
and an affiliate fellow of UVM's
Gun Institute for Environment.
He resides with his family in Syracuse
on unceded territory of the Onondaga nation.
As we think about the theme of this year's conference,
exploring the role of innovation and technology
in advancing forest science,
Colin's talk provides a moment of reflection.
Technology can facilitate analyses at large scales
and faster speeds.
It can provide a new way
of literally looking at the forest
as so many of the advances in remote sensing have,
it can enable new conversation
and new modes of communication.
But in all of that excitement and innovation,
there's also room for healthy skepticism
and the the need to carefully consider
how, why, and when
we use the newest, shiniest technologies.
Colin is a creative and critical scholar
thinking deeply about both the promise and the limitations
of new and emerging technology.
So does with pleasure that I welcome him for his talk
titled The Role of Emerging Technology
in Forest Science, Ecosystem Stewardship,
and Stakeholder Engagement.
(audience clapping)
(audio cuts out)
Everybody, thank you for having me.
Thank you Elissa and Allison.
Alright, so, we'll just jump right into this here.
Again, I'm very grateful to be here.
It's nice to be back in Burlington
and this beautiful space,
beautiful sunrise this morning
out over the greens.
And thank you again for having me.
And, as you may have noticed,
this is all home cooking.
I was part of the organizing committee.
So you know, they were like, hey, you wanna do this?
I was like, okay.
So there's a lot of things we've been thinking about,
and actually Alison said it much more eloquently,
but I wanna start with talking about Moore's Law.
I don't know how many of you
might be familiar with Moore's Law.
This is named after a gentleman who
was involved in the invention of the microchip.
And Moore basically said, you know,
there's going to be a doubling
of microchip processing capacity
every one to two years.
And we've seen that play out for five decades now.
This is exponential growth
in computing power
for five decades.
We're now going into a sixth decade
of exponential growth and computing power.
That's pretty remarkable.
Obviously it's revolutionized so many things, right?
But has it,
how has it changed our relationship with the land?
That is kind of the fundamental question
that I think we're interested in today.
It's really, really remarkable.
It's especially poignant,
as I mentioned to some of you recently,
we just learned that Micron,
the major chip manufacturer
is gonna be putting a 50 billion plant
20 minutes north of Syracuse.
This is a game changer for a rust belt town like Syracuse.
And it's gonna be both exciting and a little scary.
Some say Moore's law is failing.
Some say I'm looking at Mike,
who probably knows better than I do.
Some say will it continue to hold?
Or will we see an asymptote in this growth?
But again, know that this exponential growth
on that y axis,
this is a logarithmic axis
in terms of processing power.
There's chips in everything now.
But our question is really about
how has this growth translated
to advances in forest ecosystem science.
Whether we're talking about measurement,
monitoring, modeling, stewardship,
and really education, outreach,
and engagement with audiences.
I think most,
if not all of us know
that we struggle to reach audiences
that have an affinity forests,
or sometimes have a fear of forests,
but that have a fundamental need,
and would benefit from understanding
how forests function,
how they benefit people,
how they benefit the planet,
right?
And, and some of the difficult
decisions that we have to make,
especially is Senator Leahy pointed out,
which is pretty eloquent.
All the challenges that our forests face.
We are at a point
where we are counting on forests
to save us from climate change.
And at least in this part of the world,
they have never been
more beset on all sides
by the inequities of,
whatever, I won't go down that road,
you know what I mean.
So, but to a answer this question
I really wanted to think about,
and I couldn't find this and maybe it's out there,
but a history of forest measurements technology,
or a history of technology in forest science.
And so this is totally just mine.
I just threw this together
a tremendous amount of Wikipedia,
which, take that with a grain of salt,
right?
I feel like I'm,
Lord Kelvin is quoted as saying,
if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.
I feel like I'm channeling
some of my silviculture and forestry professors,
and some of my colleagues
across the hall in Syracuse.
But I put this together,
and just, you know,
we're going back to 1889
and that is an increment borer,
which was actually introduced in the World's Fair of 1889
and was actually a big deal.
Can you imagine that?
It was the peak of people's excitements
about increment boring.
(audience laughing)
But it was known as the Pressler,
it was just known as the Pressler.
But we've got the Clinometer,
the Biltmore Stick,
which is arguably the,
you know, Pinchot and others.
Pinchot and Schenck invented that.
And we had the Pocket Transit Compass,
aerial photography was developed,
Bitterlich was an interesting character,
invented plotless sampling with the angle gauge,
which then was followed by the wedge prism.
Densiometers, we started to get into some laser technology,
the basis for LIDAR, right?
The laser range finder,
of course satellite imagery,
which we'll talk more about, GPS.
We started to put LIDAR sensors on aircraft in the nineties
and I've got 1998 for terrestrial laser scanning here,
even though it hasn't really,
we're still early in that application for forestry,
but it has been around.
And of course UAVs for civilian use
which Arlith is an expert on.
And my animation didn't quite work,
'cause I was gonna ask you,
what's the thing that's missing?
And then it was gonna pop up.
I was gonna be all smart about it.
But, of course the loggers tape,
the diameter's tape,
and we have to give credit to three people for that.
First of all, Archimedes for pinning down pie. 3.14.
And then an English gentleman named Chesterman
invented a metal tape in 1821.
And an American named Fellows
actually put it in a circular case
with a locking mechanism,
which of course those always break, but,
so I would say that a summary of this would be
that forestry hasn't been tech averse,
but it's also, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Right?
How many people still use transect tapes
instead of laser range finders?
You know it, right?
There's, these things are,
there's some familiarity with those things
that are,
there's a reliability in in what you can hold.
And I think that that speaks to some of the culture.
And again, maybe this is a bit more reflective
of the culture of forestry, forest management,
than forest ecosystem science,
but of course they have very common roots.
I also found this paper
from a few years ago in Ecosphere.
I'm not a big fan of the graphic itself, but,
which has this kind of techno-ecological timeline
and futurecast,
I don't know why forecast isn't a good enough word anymore,
but futurecast, basically looking at
how we've moved through and, there's,
the figure doesn't reflect.
There is some really nice thoughtful
discussion and examples
of how some of this technology,
especially as we move into the future,
might be implemented
in ecological research and monitoring.
And so I encourage you to take a look at that paper,
it's open access in the Ecosphere,
but you can see that since the fifties
we've come a long way.
But arguably would say,
obviously these advances in computing capacity
have allowed for a lot of this technological advancement
in ecological sciences.
But I would say certainly in the forest world,
we aren't exactly racing ahead to embrace those things
until perhaps recently.
So, we had a lot of big questions around this,
and really, I'm gonna be clear,
I don't have answers to these questions.
Our panel does.
And, so we'll be talking with them soon,
but I want to raise them and then, and then bring it,
maybe flesh them out,
and share my thoughts in a few places, so.
So, one of the questions is,
does the new tech
actually just yield better data, better results
than we already have?
You might even say better outcomes.
That's a bigger question.
Or is it kind of a shiny toy?
Is it a distraction
from our fundamental gaps in knowledge,
or our inability to engage broader audiences?
So, we get excited about that, that new shiny thing,
but are we really, is it really moving the needle?
Is it really changing the game?
How will the new technology
interface with existing protocols?
Especially for measurement.
I'll talk about this in,
when we talk about terrestrial laser scanning,
and actually quantifying the volume of trees
instead of using allometric equations,
which the entire FIA system
in most forest inventory systems are based on.
How do we, do we need a new framework?
Do we toss out the old, how do we transition between them?
Is the upheaval worth it?
We also have to avoid that sunk cost fallacy,
'cause that inhibits progress, right?
And we do want to make progress
and there's the need to make it.
And quite skeptically,
how do we actually parse reality
from the sales pitches
that are out there for the technology,
for the firms that are implementing the technology.
This is, I've seen this especially for,
for precision forestry, which we'll talk about.
And it's not to cast dispersions on any of these folks,
but they are in business to make money
and they do have account people, right?
And so they make very compelling sales pitches
that I think the average forest landowner
might not really be prepared to evaluate,
even if the tech does fully deliver though,
is it scalable?
Is it versatile?
How practical is it really?
Does it give us landscape level applications,
or are we going to have a lot of
different information out there?
And I think we're all accustomed to
being overwhelmed with information, right?
And see the impact that that can sometimes have.
So, I found this as well
within the venture capital and the tech world,
which is this Gartner Hype cycle.
I have to point out as a professor, this is not a cycle.
(audience laughing)
It doesn't loop back again.
However,
I didn't want to change the name of it
because it's not really my idea, but it,
but I thought it was a unifying concept
and something useful for us to think about
in terms of technology.
There's a trigger,
there's a peak of inflated expectations,
these names are great.
There's a trough of disillusionment.
(audience laughing)
There's a slope of enlightenment,
and a plateau of productivity,
if this last one will pop up, there it is.
Right?
So every technology goes through these
and they've specified this a lot more.
So we don't need to get into this in great detail,
but this does kind of start to break down
this kind of process.
And again, life cycle,
it's not really a cycle,
but that's the idea.
This process that we go through with new technology,
there's this development, it's exciting, right?
There's this build, everybody's optimistic about it,
then people try to implement it, right?
And there's kind of a collapse in optimism,
or application,
and then things start to reorganize a bit,
and we start to move towards a place
where it can be productive
and where you start to see
the adoption of the technology broadly.
And so I thought it was a useful concept.
There are hype cycles for everything.
Precision ag,
which is kind of a predecessor to precision forestry,
for climate technology,
our climate tech for artificial intelligence,
and machine learning,
you might even say there's a hype cycle for this talk,
right?
Those of you came in with inflated expectations
are now staring down into the abyss of disillusionment.
But our panel will carry us up the slope of enlightenment.
(audience laughing)
So sorry, I had to do it.
So again,
back to these questions,
which I've already talked about.
But these are an encapsulation of the questions
that we talked a lot about with the organizing committee.
And, I want to just briefly apply them in three spaces.
One to remote monitoring,
to precision forestry, and to forest visualization.
And so these are areas
that our panelists have expertise in
and experience with,
and can all speak to.
And some areas where I've thought about this,
I think hopefully you have as well.
So, with remote sensing, right?
We're talking about monitoring forests from afar, right?
And of course technically drones are remote,
but I'm really talking about airframes and satellites,
okay?
In this case,
and I'm just showing on the left here,
you know, the satellites from the US, and from NASA,
and from ESA, the European Space Agency,
there are many others, but these are the primary ones.
The Sentinel Group, the Landsat series, IceSat,
Jedi, which is LIDAR, basically on the space station,
and the new biomass satellite that ESA is sending up.
Which I'm told will only capture data
between 50 degrees latitude north and south.
And I was told on a webinar recently,
that's not a big deal,
'cause there's not that much forest
above 50 degrees latitude.
And I said, have you heard of the Boreal Forest?
(audience laughing)
There's, it's kind of the biggest one in the world.
But anyways, so what's powerful about this technology
is we're constantly observing the Earth's surface.
And on, on the right here,
what I'm showing
is basically a sequence that we've taken from the folks at,
at the E Mapper group in Oregon State,
and how Land Trender,
which is an algorithm they've developed,
helps you bring together,
and kind of make sense
of these stacks of images through time
so we can trace how things are changing through time.
It's a very powerful tool.
And of course the other logo here is Google Earth Engine.
And Google Earth Engine is a remarkably powerful tool
that is still available for free now,
they're waiting until we all get hooked on it
and then they're gonna start a subscription service.
What I'm showing here
is actually some of our own work,
this is work that Lucas Johnson,
one of my students is gonna talk about.
Where we, even a group of us
who haven't really spent a lot of time doing this,
I'm more of a field person,
in a few years, can ramp up and create,
like we have a statewide, you know,
stock change assessment that's based on maps,
it's based on Landsat, LIDARs, and other things
that we can put together,
and we can track how biomass and carbon
is changing over time at these scales.
So you can see here the harvesting that took place
once this land changed hands
from Finch Prime, to the Nature Conservancy,
to a Dutch TMO ATP.
This is the upper Hudson Woodlands,
or a portion of it,
in the central Adirondacks,
just adjacent to Huntington Forest.
And there's a lot of questions about this kind of thing,
but this is where things are headed.
Carbon monitoring systems, right?
We need to be able to track this at large scales,
but also with fine enough resolution
to be able to do monitoring, reporting, and verification.
But there's lots of questions.
When we see this peek out, we know that our models saturate,
we know that Landsat can only predict such a high biomass
with Landsat data,
'cause it can really only get so green, right?
So we know our models saturate.
So the question is,
did the forest reach its maximum biomass in this view?
Or did the model hit its ceiling?
These are things we have to look at.
So there's an uncertainty.
We also know,
and this is something that Lucas will talk about
in his talk today,
the rate of recovery that we see
is probably too fast.
So it greens up before it grows up.
So with Landsat,
we see the greening up,
and it's Landsat's like, oh,
the biomass is coming right back again.
But we know that it doesn't grow back that quickly.
But with tools like this,
we can distinguish areas of working forest
from areas that are being cleared.
We can observe other types of changes.
And we can compare this working land
to a forest preserve right next to it
where we know that there aren't
large logging operations going on.
And so there's a lot of inference and a lot of tools
and things we can do.
But all of this is facilitated by the technology, right?
We're just using what others have built to do this.
So go check out Lucas' talk.
So, we also have robust field inventory,
and groups like FMC are improving that.
But of course we have
the National Forest Inventory or FIA,
which is a phenomenal data set
and a phenomenal system.
I mean, it's a really robust inventory
for earth observation, remote sensing.
That's the EO/RS.
And there's a long-term continuity
in earth observation platforms.
There's standardized products,
like the analysis ready data from Landsat.
There's new earth observation platforms from NASA and ESA,
several of them focused on forests.
And this allows us to develop some pretty cost efficient,
near realtime monitoring applications.
Because right now, monitoring, reporting, and verification
is like randomly select a group of participants
and roll out to their place,
hope they don't chase you off with a shotgun,
and check out what they're doing.
This is highly inefficient
and this isn't Justin's fault,
but DEC recently got,
you know, audited by our comptroller
who likes to go after everybody.
And, we just found like,
even existing programs that we have in New York state
are not well monitored just to,
people are being paid to maintain forest land.
They subdivided it and,
hasn't been enforced for 10 years,
and they're still getting a tax credit.
So these technologies
immediately level up
the capacity to do these things.
I will note that I talk a lot
with some of the forest industry in New York
and the DEC has been wanting to have
a harvest notification system.
And as you might imagine,
New York landowners are not excited about that.
And I said, okay,
well then we're gonna have to watch you from space.
And they're like, okay, just be fair.
Which is work that we're working on, and this is,
I mentioned Madeline's work in a minute.
But we can always have better trading data.
There's a lot of signal and noise issues in these models.
There's a lot of error propagation,
because we're often modeling on model values, right?
If in an FIA plot,
they take the diameter in the height of the tree,
and they use an allometric equation
to estimate its biomass,
we're treating that as truth.
There's uncertainty there.
We're often modeling, and training, and training and,
and it's a process.
So there's a lot of uncertainty,
and maps can hide that uncertainty
because they look so cool, right?
The map passes the smell test.
You're like, oh, that must be right.
But there's uncertainty,
and there's error in that,
and we have to be thoughtful about that.
And relatively few groups,
not including Jarlath's group,
but relatively few groups assess the accuracy of their maps.
And that's something that we really need to push for.
There's an engineering in it,
versus an ecological mindset,
and this, in the EO/RS community.
And by that I mean engineering is like, look at what we did.
And ecology is like, well what does it mean?
Right?
And I think that we need more,
obviously more ecologists,
more thinking about, not what can we do with this data,
and these tools, but what does it actually get us?
What does it really mean?
And the last thing I'm gonna mention,
'cause I'm gonna hype up Madeline here,
is the change detection tools that we have out there
are mostly untested
across forest biomes and management regimes.
And so Madeline published a paper
in Journal of Forestry as an undergrad, right?
Right.
Where we did some of the first ground truthing of this.
And this is possible because of partnerships we have
with working forest landowners
who have given us their harvest records and data.
This is, many of of you might know
this is not easy information to get.
And so they're part of this work too.
And they, they've been incredibly helpful.
So Maddie's gonna talk about that work.
As the keynote I get to plug all my students.
So I have also attempted
to put some things in remote sensing,
and on this hype curve,
just based on my own impressions.
Uh oh Jarlath's taking a picture.
So this, I'm, this is gonna be recorded forever,
but some of the different technology as I see it.
And I'm really, I would really love Jarlath,
for you to correct this
when you have a chance to come up.
We could talk about this, if it's even worth it,
but where's some of these different technologies seem to be.
I remember 10 years ago,
everybody was excited about hyperspectral.
I don't see it being applied that much
in ecological monitoring and research,
even though it seems like it would have,
but it seems like it's kind of crashing a bit.
I think people are excited about radar,
but it's still kind of a black box.
There's a lot of excitement about the space born LIDAR,
but that's pretty new.
Airborne LIDAR is pretty established,
obviously satellite imagery and the original, the OG,
aerial orthoimagery forestry,
we know how to use that.
So, here's a video
with some great jazz music that goes with it.
But this is about the revolution in the woods,
in terms of terrestrial laser scanning.
And I just,
I could talk about it,
but I just felt like it would be better to show you,
you know, this technology
and why people are so excited about it.
(upbeat jazz music)
I think it goes without saying
that you can't do this
without a lot of really powerful microchips,
and integration of different technologies.
(upbeat jazz music)
So based on this,
they can calculate the volume of the tree.
They're not estimating it right?
With an allometric model.
And any of you have nerded out on allometry,
you know, that that's like,
there's some camps in the allometry world,
and maybe we just set that all aside now,
I don't know.
But the amount of information
that they're able to extract from this technique
is remarkable.
But is it useful?
Is it scalable?
Right?
And what are the barriers to entry?
I don't know about all of you,
but most of the forest landowners that I know
are land rich and cash poor.
So, this technology is extremely powerful and exciting,
but is it really accessible to folks,
And this, but this is remarkable work.
And it's not even really that new.
I mean, they scanned that forest us 10 years ago,
but the Scandinavians are all over this, right?
But not strictly Scandinavians.
We gotta give some love, this is some great music.
But I want to show like,
the application of drones.
This is a firm out in the PNW,
Northwest Management has this product
called Forest View.
This is directly from their website.
And I,
and this is not an endorsement,
by FEMC, or me, for this firm,
but this is what they're saying is like,
you can go out and put out these traditional plots,
and measure a few hundred trees,
and it's gonna cost you about 11 bucks an acre.
and, and you only did 126 acres.
Or you can do orders of magnitude more than that, right?
And you have,
you still have some field plots,
'cause you've gotta train, right?
What the drone collects,
you've gotta train that on field data.
So at least they are actually doing field work.
Some firms, it's not clear if they do.
But the cost per acre,
and the number of trees measured, right?
It's a complete game changer, right?
And the amount of area that you can cover with this
is a game changer.
And so it does make sense as a,
as to talk about it as a revolution in the woods.
This is,
this idea of precision forestry,
and this is McKinsey and Company,
which is a consulting firm.
This is almost,
I mean, they're talking about
a complete revolution in forestry.
And we don't need to get into this too much,
but they're not just talking about measurements,
they're talking about breeding,
they're talking about your growing stock, right?
They're talking about the equipment,
how you select trees, how you harvest trees,
all of these things.
It's, it is like really, like,
a big revolution in forestry,
and it's being promoted,
and it's being pushed forward in a number of places.
And I, on the left, again, FEMC, like Alison's like,
we're not endorsing these firms, Colin,
this is not an endorsement.
This is literally from the E Forester newsletter
that we get from SAF every week.
These are the advertisers
that I've seen in this space
over the last year, right?
And so these are the folks that are in this space.
There's many more that are in this space as well.
Even John Deere is in this space.
So UAVs in particular, UAF's, you know,
platforms are versatile, efficient,
and they can be integrated with existing field protocols.
You can really improve
your forest inventory and measurements
at a much lower cost with larger area.
They also offered very detailed maps and data
for management decision support.
Like where to put skid trails, right?
Or culverts, or delineating riparian zones,
or whatever it might be.
As I mentioned, as the video shows, the TLS systems,
the laser scanning,
ground-based LIDAR precisely measures tree volume.
So do you have a need for allometry anymore?
And the cost is decreasing dramatically
and becoming a lot more accessible,
and the public's a lot more aware of these tools.
But these, in this space,
there's a lot of for-profit firms making big promises.
So right caveat emptor,
there's limited scalability,
at least of UAVs for large landscapes.
It might be cost prohibitive.
But there's opportunity to integrate
between other platforms,
aerial and satellite platforms with the UAV across scales,
which I guess is an excitement thing.
It's important to measure that,
or to mention that.
There's a variability incompatibility
amongst platforms, sensors, and data procedures.
I know folks are working on that,
but if everybody's doing something different,
then how do you bring it all together?
As I mentioned,
the forest inventory frameworks
are based on allometric models.
So how do we throw that all away
and do something different?
And a lot of times there's proprietary software
that you need to pay for
to process or analyze data.
So if you buy a laser scanner,
or you buy a drone with a little LIDAR on it,
that doesn't mean that you all of a sudden have a great map.
You've gotta grind through that data,
and usually you have to buy their software
to grind through the data,
or you have to buy a subscription.
So, none of my animations are working.
So, this last thing's supposed to pop up at the end,
but, you know, for precision forestry,
I think TLS has been around for a while,
but it's applications in forestry are still new.
UAVhyperspectral, there's some excitement about that.
UAVs LIDAR is,
maybe it's further along on the curve,
but I know of, you know,
and UAV based imagery and those sync together,
those integrated together are very powerful.
I have the dot for integrated forestry,
precision forestry services in three places.
My own anecdotal experience,
talking to forest landowners.
I know one that you know said,
and this is actually one of the largest forest landowners
in New York state said, I was skeptical,
then we went ahead and did it.
I don't know how we'd live without it.
I talked to one who was like, yeah, we did it,
wasn't worth it.
Right?
And others are like, the jury's still out, right?
So this is just my way of saying like,
your individual results may vary, right?
So, instant success, except results may vary, right?
And that's something we can talk more about.
And I think it's important to think about these things,
because I think we all know folks that own forest land,
and they might ask us these questions,
should I hire so and so?
Or should I do this?
And I don't know if I could, you know,
give them a clear answer.
Lastly, we have a nature deficit disorder in the society,
right?
We have people that are not familiar with forests.
We have a lot of people,
arguably the vast majority of our population
in urban centers is actually afraid of the forest.
And, and for understandable reasons, they're not stupid.
They're not crazy.
They're not weak.
They, it's an unfamiliar environment, right?
So I tell this story of the first time,
when I first came to the Adirondacks in 2007.
I was in Raybrook where all the state offices are,
and there's a maximum security prison there.
And there's a corrections officer,
one correction officer with a dozen inmates,
and they were doing landscaping.
And I asked the corrections officer, I said,
aren't you worried you keep track of all these guys,
just one of you?
He's like, oh no,
they're way more afraid of the woods
than they are me.
They think as soon as they step in the forest,
they're gonna get eaten by a bear, right?
The vast majority of the prisoners
that are in that facility
come from New York City and downstate, right?
And I think similarly, if we,
if some folks who live out on the countryside
end up in the city, they might be afraid of,
you know, places that aren't really dangerous to them,
right?
It's that unfamiliarity.
Forest visualizations have been around for a long time,
but I think that there's some work,
and particularly working with my friend and colleague,
Aden Ackerman, who we'll talk about, is game changer.
This is not a photo, this is a visualization.
You can walk through this stream if you want to,
in first person, like a video game, right?
And this is the quality of these visualizations
to be able to tell these kinds of stories.
And I don't know about all of you,
but I'm a very detailed, kind of, oriented person.
And the only value I've really brought to Aidan's work is
being like, eh, that leaf doesn't quite look,
like, it should look like that, right?
But that's, I guess my, you know,
that's my perspective as somebody
who spends a lot of time in the woods.
But I mean, the ability to photo map these textures,
and things like that,
it makes it very realistic,
and it gives people, I think,
an opportunity to have like an on-ramp
to a forest experience,
before they have a walk in the woods.
And there is no substitute for a walk in the woods.
But for a lot of people, that's not even an option, right?
So can we broaden engagement and tell stories,
the kinds of stories we need to tell folks
with these types of visualizations?
Just remarkable, you know,
accuracy, visually, and to be able to have, you know,
multiple species, different kinds of bark.
We have healthy beech bark,
and we have sick beech bark, right?
We have these types of things.
We can also overlay data, right?
And again, tell stories.
And so I'm going to,
this video that Aidan and some colleagues of ours
at Michigan State developed
to tell these kinds of stories.
[Lauren] Following good civic cultural practices,
and planning for long-term forest health and resilience.
For example, thinning,
or removing a portion of the trees,
can be implemented strategically
to improve ecological and financial value.
In the near term, carbon storage recovers quickly
as large trees grow,
and diverse young trees become established.
In the long term, this stand
is diverse, resilient, and healthy.
Carbon sequestration rates are high,
and the forest continues to regenerate into the future.
And because this also allows a forest
to grow older and larger trees,
there is a substantial increase in carbon storage.
[Colin ] This is Lauren Cooper, right?
Lauren Cooper who's the director of
the forest carbon and climate program at Michigan State
did that lovely voiceover,
multi-talented person.
Very soothing.
There's a growing public awareness of forest benefits
in terms of health climate, a number of things, right?
But I think forest,
and I, of course I get to teach at ESF, right?
We're all tree nerds.
But outside of that bubble,
understanding of forests is pretty limited.
It lags behind, I think, in the public mind.
And particularly can we reach underserved audience
as an on ramp to a real forest experience.
Demonstration forests,
we know are really effective
at helping to convey messages
about forest stewardship, management,
things that are counterintuitive.
Why sometimes you have to cut trees to say a forest, right?
These are counterintuitive things for the general public,
but you show them a demonstration area like, oh, that's,
that makes sense.
And of course,
folks in New England and New York
wouldn't have been doing it for generations
if it was catastrophic, right?
So there is some local knowledge around this.
And of course there's tremendous amount
of traditional knowledge
that we're just starting to recognize.
But these, can we create virtual demonstration forests?
'Cause people aren't rushing out like they're,
to Legoland, or Disneyland, to go to a demonstration forest.
Can we create a VR space
where they can experience some of these things?
And that it's data driven.
So we're not accused of just making cartoons up, right?
That these are real places
that we're kind of digitally twinning, right?
That reflect long-term forest research
that helps us understand these dynamics.
And so, Aidan can share more of these with you.
And there's a lot going on,
talking about the progression of beech bark disease
and implications for things.
And there's open tools being developed
for data driven visualizations that tell these stories.
And this is work of
another one of my students, Mike Mahoney.
And I promise this is the last plug for my students,
who, you know, does a lot of things.
He just builds R packages in his spare time, right?
So he's building R packages
so that anybody can get on these game engines,
bring their data in,
and create visualizations like this.
This is lowering the barriers to entry in a huge way, right?
To be able to take inventory data and, and locations,
so terrain is really exciting because
you basically pick a spot,
the package pulls in all the geo data
from the national map and other places
and creates a three-dimensional visualization
that you can interact with
and do all kinds of analysis with.
But there is no substitute for a walk in the woods,
I say that time and time again.
And there's no substitute for field work
as it replaced to monitoring.
There's no silver bullet either,
for misconceptions about forest ecology and management.
Aidan and I have written a few proposals over the years
that run into that kind of grumpy skepticism,
a lot that,
ah, there've been forced visualizations forever, right?
There's been two decades of unfulfilled hype around VR,
right?
Will better graphics,
I mean, these are way better,
but will this really change this?
I, we don't know.
And could any of us with kids,
like more screen time, really?
Right?
Even more screen time?
Could this actually make nature deficit disorder worse?
People like, well, it's good enough.
I saw it in in my Oculus,
I don't need to actually go out there.
The goal is to get people out there, right?
But this is an meant to be an on-ramp,
but maybe it, you know,
and again, even with Mike's work and other work,
there are still significant barriers to entry.
And I'm gonna give Aidan credit for this
because he did it,
because mine looked terrible, right?
But this is really showing this progression of VR,
in particular, over time.
And that there is a growing engagement with this,
and I know some of my grumpiest forestry colleagues
are like,
(gasps)
you know, and these are, these are folks that like,
didn't think that video games
had anything to contribute to their work, right?
And it, they're, it's a game changer instantly.
So it's exciting.
So, we still have these same questions.
I haven't answered them for you.
Hopefully I've gotten you thinking about them.
But as I said,
and I would like to welcome our expert panel
to come up is that, they just?
Be careful coming on the stage.
So I'm very grateful to have these three experts,
and really productive thinkers,
with us today,
and I'm gonna attempt to facilitate a discussion.
First is Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne.
Jarlath, I apologize for adding an L
to your last name there.
He's the director of the spatial analysis lab
here at UVM,
and also with the US Forest Service
Northern Research Station.
Jarlath is one of the rock stars
in remote sensing,
and making sense of remotely sensed data
that I know of,
is somebody that we always look to
as a leader in this field.
And particularly really,
the good basic fundamental technology,
but the applications of it.
Really powerful, really diverse.
Probably one of the biggest evangelists for drones
and their applications and resource stewardship.
Dr. Sara Kuebbing comes from the,
from the forest school at Yale University,
that other forest school.
She's the director of the Applied Science Synthesis program.
She's an applied and and I, Sara,
I took the liberty of saying translational ecology
in the position that you're in,
in the sense that
it's about doing research
and engaging multiple ways of knowing,
engaging people, and stakeholders
outside of academia,
or outside of this agency
as co-generating,
co-generating the knowledge together.
She has a background
in conservation and invasion biology
and plant community and ecosystem ecology.
Really grateful for Sara joining us.
And last but certainly not least is Aidan Ackerman,
who is an assistant professor
in our landscape architecture department at SUNY ESF.
And he's really bringing an amazing skillset
and a really wonderful collaborative ability
to data-driven environmental modeling,
visualization, simulation, and immersive VR technology,
and already applying it and work
with the National Park Service
and a number of other groups,
including the siting of wind, windmills, wind,
what are they officially called?
They're not just windmills.
They're windmills?
[Audience Member] Wind turbines?
[Colin] Wind turbines. Thank you.
And, so really applying this work
into environmental decision making space.
So, let's give a round of applause for our panel,
'cause they're gonna answer all these questions.
(audience clapping)
And I'm gonna leave this slide up
unless you want to change it,
and sit here, sit down.
So who wants to start?
Well I think Colin,
we should start by marveling,
not just remote sensing,
but what Photoshop can do because gosh,
my pre-COVID Photoshop photo looks,
I look so much better up there, don't I?
I know I wanted to put male model
underneath there as well.
Well, I can jump in.
You hear me okay?
That was a great talk and, you know,
very entertaining and really captured a lot of
the questions that come up for me.
I think one thing that stood out
when you did that timeline of tool development
from Wikipedia was, you know, not being a forester,
I do guess that probably that sort of
first half of that tool set,
it's probably developed four forestry practices primarily.
And that second half getting into digital
I think was maybe more derivative.
Like I think about this
as a landscape architect all the time
where there's no software or tool
made for landscape architecture.
You know, so I suspect that the, you know,
things like remote sensing, or use of video game engines,
or any of that started with a different need
that was its primary driver,
often a military need, right?
And others as well.
Or an entertainment need in the case of the virtual stuff.
And then we sort of find ways to apply it.
And so, you know, that fundamentally leads to,
you know, probably like a core mismatch
between what it was intended to do
and what we're doing with it,
which doesn't mean it doesn't do what we're doing very well,
but I think there's just something interesting about
a tool that was developed for a specific forestry,
or monitoring practice,
like an analog tool usually,
and the adoption of a different tool,
that had a different intent,
and starting to apply it to what we do.
So that stood out.
And you know, I say with,
with the virtual visualizations,
that's very much the case.
Like we, we are have inherited two great technologies,
right?
So, virtual reality and video game technology,
and mostly those have been used to play games
and to sell condos that haven't been built yet
by looking at in virtual reality.
And so, a lot of what we get, we, you know,
digitally grow our trees, or we go out and we take,
you know, photogrammetry of actual trees,
but the ways in which we assemble them are
taking, pretty much other people's products,
and other people's workflows and putting together.
So I think one thing that,
you know, boosting Mike's talk is, you know,
that's one of the first applications of
a specific workflow to forestry first and foremost.
So I don't know if that,
you know, given your two areas,
your reactions to that,
you know, mine is probably the furthest,
like I'm borrowing a lot
from the entertainment side of things,
but if that, you know, lands for you at all,
I'm thinking specifically about like those tape measures,
and those, you know, lenses,
and what those do,
they do like one specific thing really well
for monitoring and measurement, right?
And what your reaction is to that.
Well, I think in my case,
the more I use technology,
the more I become concerned about things.
One is the data sciencification of things,
trademark, all rights reserved.
In that, what do we lose
when we move to these technologies?
What do we lose in our workforce, right?
As our students are sitting around
taking more classes that I teach
in geospatial or advanced statistics,
do they lose the time in the woods,
and the understanding, right?
And we take a look at a lot of the things around
artificial intelligence and remote sensing.
Great.
You built an algorithm
that extracts all the buildings from satellite imagery
in the world, right?
My, daughter when she was two
would have been really good at identifying a building.
When we get into some of the complicated issues
that we're talking about in forestry,
we really need domain expertise.
And my great concern is that we're losing that.
I also really liked your talk, Colin,
because you went outside of forestry
and I think what's nice when we get into these technologies
is we can look at other industries.
I ask my friends and relatives who are in medicine
about the move to digital records
and all the imaging,
and do they really feel like
America is any healthier now
with billions of dollars?
Are they more fulfilled in their jobs?
No, no, no.
Right across the board.
And then I think we have some very worrying trends
we're seeing
with the move in precision agriculture
that can give us an indication
of what may be coming in forestry,
you no longer own your equipment.
You license things.
The data are all behind the scenes.
You have very, very little understanding of what's going on.
And I think here in the northeast,
where we have a lot of
smaller scale and family run operations,
these technologies may not scale.
But when we look what's happened in precision agriculture
in the Midwest,
I think those are some real concerns that we should have,
particularly for an organization like FEMC, right?
Because then you have all the awesomeness of data
suddenly no longer exists within government agencies
or individuals who may be willing to share it.
It does potentially exist within corporations.
Yeah, I guess I'll just chime in here.
I'm glad to hear Jarlath bring up medicine.
I think this is something our group has talked a lot about,
is parallels between worlds like epidemiology and forestry,
which on the onset maybe seem very different,
but together they have very similar problems.
And this touches on the scaling question
that Colin brought up
that I think connects all these questions,
is we have data sets that we're collecting
literally at different spatial scales,
and we need to downscale those data sets sometimes,
and we need to upscale those data sets sometimes.
And then thinking about that application
and how we can do that,
or if we can do that well,
there's a lot of questions there.
But, I think the connection is
when we think about individual humans,
and their health,
epidemiologists are rarely going to say,
you are going to get COVID today, and you will not.
Right?
The models can't predict that.
That's the same thing with our forest stands.
I think we should be realistic about a single forest stand
being able to really be able to predict,
and predict or project into the future
what will happen at that individual level
despite the massive amounts of data.
And so one area also that
our group has been thinking a lot about
is the application of this technology
into the carbon credit markets,
which are at that whatever the peak is of the hype cycle.
That is where we are right now.
And how these conversations
about the differences in data are fueling that.
So, touching on some of the things you guys talked about,
trying to stay far away from
answering any of Colin's questions.
Yeah. I think there's,
and Jarlath, you brought up this,
there's this black box, right?
Kind of in the sense of like,
people don't know how these things work.
And you've worked with so many different,
kind of clients,
in the sense of different partners.
Have you found the
concern about what's kind of behind the curtain?
Does that, does that impede progress?
Does that create less faith in the outputs?
Does that, or does that vary
amongst different types of folks?
Different types of clients in different settings,
whether, I know you've worked with military,
you worked with FEMA,
you worked, worked with so many different
types of partners.
Yeah, I think people are so pushed right now.
They really just,
they almost want a one-pager,
or they want a PowerPoint slide
that's gonna answer their question.
I think where we see the,
one of these major challenges
with remote sensing technologies
is that, particularly when we seek to
understand long-term trends,
is that our past data and our new data
don't match.
You can just take LIDAR for instance,
and the trees look very different.
The gaps look very different.
All of these things, as the technology improves.
And so our ability to understand things
in just a world I operate in a lot,
which is providing people
with estimates of tree canopy in open areas
will get wildly different estimates.
Whether you're using Landsat imagery,
whether you're using a point-based sample
from photos,
where the trees lean
in different directions
in those photos,
or where you're using high resolution LIDAR.
And that story can be your city's gaining tree canopy,
or your city's losing tree canopy.
That's a, it's a completely opposite of one another.
And I think that's where the challenge is,
is that people want faith in the data,
and the faith in the technology,
and it is actually inherently very unstable
and gives us very different answers.
And that causes a lot of questions.
And it comes down to trust, right?
So many things fall on our emotions
and we want to trust these things,
and the reality is that we can't always trust them.
And then when it gets to the black box,
that's even less trust.
Right.
No, thank you.
Yeah. I think,
it makes me think also,
and that kind of gets to my point again,
I'm not trying to disrespect to engineers,
but I think that the idea,
there is a lot of the work of like,
there's a new satellite,
there's a new sensor,
there's a new algorithm, right?
And let's go for it, right?
And let's do it.
But then stacks on top of all the other things
we already have.
And there isn't that work
to kind of come back and compare,
and try to understand what is,
are there common threads, right?
Or are these very contradictory?
And again, that gets to this idea of like,
what does it really mean, right?
And I also went down a rabbit hole with this,
and you know, thinking about means versus ends, right?
And I think, you know,
Sara and AIE were talking about outcomes, right?
And so the how do we get there?
And you, Aidan you pointed out
that a lot of the technology
that we're applying to forestry
wasn't developed for that,
same thing with video game engines with VR.
It wasn't meant to be applied
in this environmental visualization space.
And it, but the same is true for NASA, right?
I mean, NASA's funding programs are like,
we sent this, we developed this technology
and we sent it up in space.
Could you find other uses for it?
Right?
That maybe, cynically,
would help us justify our budget, right?
And so, you know,
there's a lot of technology that NASA's developed,
but most of us just familiar with the pen
that will write upside down, right?
And it's that kind of example
that wasn't what, you know,
what they originally designed it for.
So I just want to,
I just want to think about the,
is there a hazard in applying technology
in the new space?
I think we can see some of the benefits of it,
but are there other kinds of hazards?
Yeah,
I was thinking a little bit about tools
and the hype cycle.
Actually, I got started thinking about tools when
both Jarlath and Sara mentioned medical applications.
So, you know, go off on a tangent for a second.
My mother-in-law was a midwife at Dartmouth Hitchcock
and she, you know,
we talk a lot about technology
and she talks about charting, you know,
writing down the patient's records
and how it used to be,
her interpretation of things,
and she would write out,
kind of like a story,
and how much that changed
when she was given dropdown menus
to choose symptoms,
and stuff like that.
And so, you know,
that's a great illustration
of what I tell my students all the time is like
that I, you know,
being, loving digital technology so much,
there's always this fundamental debate,
hand drawing versus digital.
And one is an open-ended tool
that you've been using your whole life.
And the other comes with options, and menus, and tools.
And so, when, you know,
typically even with some of the older forestry tools,
you pick it up
and you do
what it tells you it should do,
because it's a tool with certain things it can do.
And with digital tools,
I think that becomes even riskier
because you can't manipulate the thing,
or try different things.
You just really are guided by the interface.
And so, that's sort of, you know,
that can be really reassuring, I think, to end users,
that once you learn how to operate the digital tool,
you're proficient at it,
and you can do what you need to with it.
I think sort of back to that hype cycle,
first kind of the upsides,
of breaking open and using the tools differently.
Oftentimes, you know,
there's ideas of social transformation of work,
and that a tool is often introduced to society
with particular use.
It sort of exhausts that user base,
and then that's the peak of that hype cycle.
And then there's kind of a disillusionment
that it can't transform everything in our lives,
or whatever we're trying to do.
And then people start
kind of taking advantage of,
or exploiting some other things that tool can do.
I don't know where people come up with these ideas.
I think they're amazing, right?
Let's try this weird thing that it's not meant to do.
And then you start to see
actually what that transformative tool
can actually do.
I mean some tools are introduced,
and they do what they're meant to do,
and it changes everything.
But most tools go through that,
and then it's actually that secondary,
finding new and novel applications.
So I think probably the biggest risk,
and I probably am not,
I think maybe I looked to you two to answer this
about bigger risks.
The biggest risk for me,
'cause I think more and I see more advantages,
to starting to break open those tools
and do new things
that they weren't intended to do
or marketed towards.
That's where we're starting to see
some of our best outcomes
with the digital visualization
and taking like, you know,
5 or 10 different tools
and finding out how to put them together
to do very specific things
that altogether become
like a very transformatively different workflow.
I think the biggest risk is
still thinking about how few,
to your point about adoption,
how few people, and offices, and agencies,
can actually end up using those 5 or 10 tool set
specialized software,
years of learning how to do these,
often inventing these things yourself,
and writing papers about them,
doesn't transform into everyday applications
and the broad transport power we say they do,
because somebody in an office
can't sort of open up one or two tools
and start to explore them,
and do things that they need to do.
They like hire us to consult and do these things,
and there's only one of us, you know, our group.
So I think the biggest risk is
that these become more and more bespoke,
and unique, and specialized,
and further away from
what made them popular in the first place,
which is,
most people can use it
with a little bit of time spent and learning,
but I'm sure there are other risks.
That's the biggest one I can see is like, you know,
you get farther and farther away from
a broad base of users.
Yeah.
I mean I guess the biggest risk I see
is that these are big complicated systems
and I appreciate Colin, how you sort of,
you know,
separated out precision forest measurement,
from remote sensing,
from visualization.
But I think,
I mean there's obviously other categories,
but there's also space in between.
And I think there's many people,
especially in the carbon crediting world
that are pushing precision remote sensing,
and precision remote sensing prediction.
And so I think there's risks of the hype,
creating confidence
that maybe we should be a little more humble about,
about what we can and can't do
to sort of capture emerging markets
that need to move fast,
and they need to move now,
and creating systems that could become problematic
down the line.
[Colin] Right.
While our money,
money that could go to actual forest conservation,
but goes to other forest uses
that may or may not be exactly
what we thought they were,
but we won't know until
actually someone
brings out their prism gauge
in 20 years,
and goes and measures it.
[Colin] Right.
Yeah. I think about like,
are there, they,
a lot of the stuff I've seen around precision forestry,
they drop the confidence intervals.
Yeah.
They don't even show them.
And it's kind of like, hang on a second.
And I think that the,
that just raises a red flag for me.
[Sara] Yeah.
And again, you,
if you're in the business of,
if you're in the business of selling something,
you don't want to talk about its weaknesses.
[Sara] Right.
And that makes sense from one standpoint,
from another standpoint,
there are folks that have to hold the line,
and say, what do we really know from this?
And, I think, you know,
and I'm interested,
I mean,
do you agree with me
that not a lot of folks assess the accuracy of
their map products?
I mean, it's not a,
it's not as common as you think it should be,
or it would be.
And I don't even think we have the ability
to do the level of accuracy assessment
that we need nowadays,
particularly when it comes to historical data, right?
Like, we don't,
if we want to talk about change over time,
which I think is so crucial to all of us,
we can't roll back.
When I do LIDAR based change detection of forest canopies,
I don't have the level of detail from 2012 on the ground
to say that what I'm estimating from remotely sensed data
is anywhere close to it what it,
what I'm calling it.
Right.
So the challenge is, nothing's gonna be perfect, right?
All models are wrong, some models are useful, right?
And so the,
you don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good,
but are you really, you know,
I do think that there's some inherent, you know,
when you see some of these kinds of data sets
that we can produce with LIDAR and things like that,
they're just very intuitive.
And because they're,
and like your visualizations Aidan, like,
because they're intuitive,
they convey a certain reality
and it hides the uncertainty that's below it.
And I'm sure you've experienced this,
I know I have just in the last few years
of getting really into this space
as kind of leading these projects
as opposed to being the guy that's shaking my fist
and being like, it's, you need to go on the woods.
Right?
But, the challenge is
to find that line, right?
And that,
when you're conveying this uncertainty,
to different end users,
like do they really grasp it?
Right?
And, so you're obviously doing the work
because you believe it has power and value,
and it can move the needle,
and it can lead to a better outcome.
But you also have to be humble about it, you know?
And,
but there will always be someone else
that chooses not to take the path of humility, right?
And who makes really great promises
around their stuff and doesn't really
think about what it means.
So yeah, that's not really a question-
Well, just to speak to that a little bit,
you know, we've had scenarios where,
so something like a photoreal visualization,
you can plaster text right over it
that says this is a simulation,
and take it away.
And it would just,
the nature of it looking like a photograph,
which is somewhat still considered to be
a record of what happened,
means that it will stand out
as the definitive truth right,
to people,
probably also these hyperreal captures
of, they're hyper detailed,
also look like the definitive record, right?
It's said, they say nothing about,
at least my models say nothing about
the ecology or the processes,
it's just a image.
So we've actually had projects
where we've backed off of the realism,
applied like sketchy styles,
just because we're so nervous
that this is going to,
and these are more with historic visualizations,
that they're going to be sort of this summative graphic
that people take away as oh, that's how it looked.
You know, you're nodding your head.
Yeah.
I, that's awesome.
I think that's great.
Aidan, you and I have talked a lot about,
and one of the things
that really captured my excitement
when I first met you
and started seeing your work
was the ability that this can,
can you just talk a little bit about
like stakeholder engagement
and being able to,
and you as well, Sara.
I mean, I think
being able to communicate messages
without having to use charts or graphs,
which the average person is just,
they glaze over immediately.
But being able to put them in a first person visualization
of either this is what's happened over time,
or this is what's going to happen, right?
This is what we think is gonna happen,
or here are alternative scenarios
of what we could do.
Right?
It creates a lot of power
for engaging people where,
meeting people where they are, potentially.
Can you speak to that a little bit?
Yeah.
And then I'll,
I'd love if Sara follow up,
I mean there's two pieces to these virtual forests.
One is just, and I worry about this, that they're dazzling.
They just look so real, and that, you know,
I don't know how they'll look in 10 years,
probably they'll look like something
that was made 10 years ago looks now,
but for the moment they look,
people, I mean,
so that's one piece of, of engagement is just,
they're, people can't believe what they're seeing,
and that kind of can be dangerous.
Like are we actually engaging them,
or are we just engaging their wonder
with anything that looks hyper real?
You know?
But environments are
the hardest thing to capture realistically.
Like a manmade object is very easy to simulate,
just because of the organic and diverse nature
of every piece of the forest.
So I do think that there's some special fascination,
but people say, I've never,
I've seen stuff like this,
but it always looks so bad.
But there is a piece of it that, you know,
taps into, why do we care about them being so realistic?
And I think it's connecting people with that
sense of awe, something that's bigger than themselves,
that they can really connect with this place.
That to me is the start of that conversation.
We're not just just showing them software
and they feel like they're looking at software.
They've, and we've done,
Colin's been instrumental
with years of improving them,
'cause I certainly don't,
I'm not a forester,
so that somebody who knows their land well
knows it, it's ins and outs.
can actually look at these visualizations
and feel like they're seeing
something similar to their land.
And we'd like to study more on the end side of this,
does this actually move the needle or change behavior?
And that's like just a very long process to set up.
So we mostly look at right now,
are we getting people to want to engage with these?
Are they,
are they watching them
for the whole amount of time that we want
for the message to get across?
But I would go back to saying like, you know,
I've been asked like, why does it need to be realistic?
There's plenty of these virtual forests out there
where these are just sort of stock trees
and it is connecting people with
what we know is one of the great things about the forest
is this sense that you're in this huge thing
that you can't fully comprehend,
it as a living ecosystem,
and sort of this sense of wonder,
which is kind of funny to think about
with such a technical message.
But I think that's sort of where it starts for me,
is getting people to feel connected to the place
so that the space can open up for them
to think about it.
How about you Sara?
Yeah, I think virtual reality is very cool,
but I also see it's
a potential engagement for promoting action
and allowing people to visualize in a way
that they really can't,
either by traveling many places,
or access to promoting change.
And so I'm gonna share a story
that I don't know whether it's true or not,
but now I'm going to spread it widely
and we'll just make it true.
(Colin laughing)
It's on the record now.
Yeah, it's on the record now.
The, so I heard from an entomologist one time,
that there's a huge federal line item
for Lymantria dispar control and research.
The insect now known as spongy moth.
And if you look at that,
relative to the many other pests and pathogens
that are threatening our forests
and the emergence, it's sort of dwarfs,
or sorry, those funding line items for, you know,
Cyrex, wood WAFs or these other things,
are dwarfed by
what we now just have as like
a federal line item that gets passed every year
for spongy moth.
And the entomologist who told me the story said
the forest service back in the day
was pushing, and pushing, and pushing,
and trying to get research into invasive pests and pathogens
and just was not making headway with legislatures.
They just didn't really care about it,
except for then there was a retreat
out at Camp David in Maryland,
and there happened to be in that area
a spongy moth infestation.
And the picnic tables were covered with poop
from the caterpillars.
But that allowed for an engaging discussion
with policy makers and legislatures
to say like, what is this, this is wild.
Camp David has never looked like this before.
This is what spongy moth infestations do.
And it allowed this entry point
for ecologists and foresters
to go in and talk about the impacts of the forest.
And so while we probably can't engage with, you know,
beech bark disease, or these others and you know,
introduce them to Camp David, you know,
at ideal times when policy makers will be out there,
we can have Aidan bring in,
for Senator Leahy to share with his colleagues,
these visual reality of,
this is what a forest looks like now,
and this is what it could look like,
under these different circumstances,
and hey, we have a bunch of, you know,
people who are on the ground
and who are ready to do the research
and to figure out what's going on.
And I see that being a really powerful tool
that could be really well engaged,
and where precision,
where having it look really real is awesome,
but the precision doesn't necessarily need to be there
that we're promising in terms of,
though that tree definitely has a knot, you know,
this far up the tree, and there's this much carbon,
but just enough to give that sense.
(indistinct)
God, to, that could see that right?
That virtualization,
and come to some conclusions as politicians do
and make some assumptions,
and then suddenly force money into this thing that,
you know, says we cannot cut another beech ever.
And I'm gonna make a law that says no more beech,
it's against the law, and you're gonna be thrown into jail,
because I saw what happened.
[Sara] Yeah.
You know, and, you know, and you go,
well what did you see?
Well, I got this virtual thing
and they showed me what the forest is gonna look like
in the deep Adirondacks,
which is supposed to be forever wild,
and there's no beech,
and there's nothing left.
Oh my God.
It was horrible.
And you're like, whoa.
that was a total misinterpretation of the intention,
which is to sink money into, you know,
invasive species research, or something like that.
[Sara] Yeah.
So it seems like a lot of times
these things always go in that direction.
How do you, I mean, I guess you can't,
it's a, you can't protect-
[Colin] Once the cat's out of the bag,
you can't really-
Right. Right. Exactly-
[Colin] But. I think, I mean,
not to bounce it back at you Justin,
but I mean that's kind of the job of the agencies right?
Is to correct their legislators.
Well, and, and that's, you know-
I'm say that as an academic, right?
I'm honestly listening to this
and I'm trying to see how we apply it all.
Like we,
when we talk about the remote sensing
and the aerial stuff,
the idea from our perspective,
looking at New York state, right?
It's a vast forest
and 90% of the population that votes in New York state
has no idea that forest exists, right?
So I could see the opportunities
and the complications to that.
But when it comes to,
we don't care what people think,
what we care about is the forest itself.
So our job is to see that invasion
before it becomes a problem.
And we do that.
The easiest way we do that is aerially, right?
We somehow get up and we fly over,
and if we see something that sticks out like a sore thumb,
we go investigate it,
and hopefully we catch that disease before it goes rampant.
And that's where I see the power of this aerial and,
and remote sensing.
And I want you guys to continue working on that stuff
and get it focused in
so that one, it's useful
and two, it's available,
i.e. cheap, you know, and,
but I know that me being the audience
is not the landowner, right?
The landowner doesn't give a hoot about
the cost and the evaluation of a remote sensing,
satellite imagery, whatever.
What they do care about is, geez,
my tree turned orange in the back
and now you're knocking on my door.
How the heck did you know my tree was orange in the back?
And please tell me what's killing it.
Suddenly there's a connection.
'Cause I think that,
just like that politician seeing the visual thing,
and then suddenly making all these rules,
The landowner doesn't care about the world.
What they care about is why my tree
is turning orange in the back.
And that's like suddenly where I see the connection with,
you know, all this information,
this vast information that we're developing,
we're figuring out,
and then putting it on the ground,
and suddenly having that landowner
doesn't care about anything that we do
except why their tree is dying.
I think that's,
as long as we can make that connection,
that's the value and the importance of it all.
[Colin] And Justin, I just wanna say,
I think the idea, at least for,
I don't wanna speak for Aidan, but for me,
with these visualizations is
that you're curating what you're showing in the message.
And you're, as we know, when we're talking to legislatures,
we gotta aim for a third grade level.
And I'm not being snarky. It's true.
That's what I'm told all the time.
When you know, and with these visualizations,
you make the message very clear
and you make it visual
and you can show people.
Like for example, the,
and this is where it all comes together,
at least for me,
is that if you're doing remote sensing
to detect forest health problems,
if you want to then take action, right?
As the resource steward,
that one responsible for protecting the resource,
you're probably going to need to take some actions
that some stakeholders are not gonna like,
it might be politically problematic,
especially like in the forest preserve,
the Adirondack part, right?
Where you have some limitations,
at least politically,
as to what you can do there
in terms of silviculture, sanitation,
harvesting, that type of thing.
If you can illustrate to an audience,
like if we just sit there and leave it alone, right?
This is the likely outcome, right?
If we take action,
we can potentially lead to a better outcome.
And you try to curate the message in a way
that it's hard to misinterpret,
which, and it still can be,
but that you try to really focus it in and,
and you also really want to make it data driven
so you're not accused of just,
like waving your hands around
and imagining a better future.
(indistinct comment)
They go to the property owner,
or they do the talk at the community,
and so much of the information,
it's like they know, they know what they're saying is right.
But it's anecdotal, right?
You know, well how do you know that
if we don't do anything, all the ash are gonna die?
Well because the, you know,
go to Michigan, they're all dead.
I mean, it's gonna happen.
You guys gotta prepare yourselves.
We'll work on it.
We have so many other things that we have to worry about.
10 years later, you know,
all their ash trees are dead,
and they're going, ah,
we need the government to come in and pay for this
because we didn't know this was gonna happen.
We're like, well 10 years ago
we actually told you it was gonna happen,
and we told you to plan for it.
You know, so I, you know,
I guess getting that anecdotal information
and making it, proving it, you know, with your,
with the things you do-
[Colin] Yeah.
At the universities.
That's where I think that that that really helps.
And I know, and I appreciate where you're coming from,
where you're still working on it.
But boy, if you're working on it
and then, you know,
the hard part here is in with technology
is you're working on it,
you're working on it,
and you're starting to get close,
but then the technology changes,
and then you're doing something completely different.
I mean, you guys have been saying this, all of you,
that by the time we get to figuring one thing out,
the technology changes
and we're starting to do something else.
And then we look back to our old data to try to compare.
And there you can't, it's completely different.
We better figure that out
because eventually it's gonna get to the point
where no one's gonna wanna listen to any of us.
'Cause you know,
you're gonna contradict yourself in two years.
Come on.
[Jarlath] Yeah.
Well, I think one of the things that we,
another mistake we've made,
and especially with remote sensing,
is this move to quantification of everything.
So remote sensing was highly qualitative, right?
Forestry, remote sensing, trade craft,
came outta World War II,
highly qualitative, right?
People trying to figure things out,
and aerial photos, high-resolution aerial photos
were always very, very powerful,
combined with ground information.
They helped us tell a story,
which is what you're trying to do with VR, right?
Like, we want to tell a story,
and now we've had this impulse to quantify everything
so we can produce bar charts and p values
and all of this stuff, which I'm not convinced makes,
helps us make better decisions.
And one of the reasons why I love drone technology
is because you can sort of do what we used to do a lot of,
which is just take high resolution ariel photos,
and they, you immediately understand them.
Unlike satellite images,
which are too course,
and have a lot of these values and things like that,
they immediately communicate to the landowner
and enhance their understanding
and validate their understanding of their landscape,
and also produce a valuable record.
And I think when we look at some technologies that are
successful, right?
Like GPS, just, it's really, really simple.
It's easy to understand.
And so it's widely adopted.
It's something that any of you were to go out to the field
and we're gonna say, don't get coordinates for that, right?
You think that's a little bit strange.
And I think things like drones will just be allow us like,
hey, when we're out there,
let's just get a photo of the area.
We don't have to quantify, we don't have to run AI on it.
We don't have to extract all the species.
Let's just have a record there
so that we can look back
and see if it matches up with our stuff on the ground.
And I think the best technologies,
especially in the places we operate in,
where we're probably not always
doing these industrial operations,
are gonna be simple ones
that landowners can employ
that are low cost, highly reliable,
and allow us to make better decisions.
[Colin] Well said.
[Elissa] All right.
I think that I have to,
this has been a wonderful conversation,
and really exciting panel.
I'm going to keep us moving on the course of the day.
So I would really love to thank all of our panelists and,
and Colin especially for wonderful presentation
and discussion.
So-
(audience clapping)
And I do encourage all of you
to continue talking about this
throughout the course of the day.
I'm sure that they'd be happy to talk to you more about it
as you see them in the space
and think about it as you're attending
the contributed talk sessions
and over lunch.
So these are some great pieces of things to think about.
And one thing that I was thinking about is,
I do want to recognize our virtual audience.
And I was thinking about where hybrid conferences
land on the hype cycle,
and I don't really know,
I'm really hoping they're on the plateau.
[Colin] Teaching on Zoom is in the trough.
Yeah.
[Colin] Disillusionment.
(Elissa laughing)
But I do want to, you know,
recognize and thank all of the people
who are attending virtually,
and we look forward to seeing you again in person soon.
And please do send in questions on the chat
while you're attending different sessions.
And for the plan for the rest of the day,
right now we have a short coffee break,
then we'll meet back in here at 11
to learn a little bit about the FEMC
and work with our state coordinators.
And so come back here at 11 to
hear what is being done in each of the states.
Then that will be followed by
our first contributed talk session.
And those will be in the,
the rooms on your agendas,
and down the hall.
And that will be followed then by lunch.
So we'll be back in this space
and in the other side of this room
where we can continue to gather and talk, to share ideas.
And then the rest of the day, more contributed talks,
working sessions.
We have three working sessions.
Two are available virtually and,
and three are available here in person.
And then the poster session and social hour.
So I hope everybody has a wonderful day
and I look forward to talking to everyone
all throughout the day.
[Colin] Thanks, Elissa.
(audience clapping)