Malheur National Forest to use drones to monitor contract areas

MALHEUR NATIONAL FOREST – Forest Service Silviculturist Zane Murray was recently in KJDY and News103 Studios, and informed listeners that the Malheur National Forest has some pretty handy gadgets for monitoring timber sale and Pre-Commercial Thinning contracts:

“We just wrapped up last year’s contract this spring. That was the 2100 acre [project]. We’ll be doing our monitoring with drones. We’re going to start using drone monitoring to look at canopy height and vegetation. And, hopefully we’ll use some LIDAR technology for canopy height. We’ll see if we can get that technology out there. There will at least be video footage, flying along private [property] before and after treatments.”

Listen to the full podcast with Murray below: