A DIGITAL woodland inventory tool that promises a faster and more accurate method for collecting data on forestry resources has undergone its latest, major upgrade.
myForest, a flagship project of Oxfordshire-based charity, Sylva Foundation, is now enabling users to automatically estimate the timber volume of a woodland stand, simply by entering two parameters for a selection of trees in sample plots.
This fully automated process, of converting raw diameter and height measurements into tree volumes and basal areas, is the result of the myForest team digitising thousands of lines of data from the Forest Research Blue Book, the definitive guide on tree and timber measurement.
The myForest inventory tool has been developed in partnership with the Northwoods Innovation Programme, a Forestry Commission-funded initiative that works with woodland owners and innovators to develop tools and techniques that support woodland management. With this support, myForest has been able to undergo numerous updates, such as creating and downloading geospatial PDF maps.
Sylva’s head of forestry Andrew Clark said: “We wanted to create a woodland inventory process that required limited user input and could be gathered with relative ease.
"By limiting the data required to species, diameter-at-breast height (DBH), and height, this new functionality means the process is accessible to those with limited experience and does not depend on specialist or expensive equipment.”
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