- Precision agriculture was one of the early killer GPS civil apps – the farmers could never afford it.
- ImageTree – the Precision Forestry company just received an investment from the CIA.
- Determining stand volume, remotely, is the holy grail for foresters. Did ImageTree find it?
One of the early killer apps for GPS was going to be precision agriculture. Satellites were launched in support of this and billions of dollars were invested. There were a number of start-ups and the big players, like Con Agra and John Deere were involved. The idea was that you would be able to manage large farmlands at the micro-level, say 10 meters by 10 meters. I am not even sure what the current state of the art is in this marketplace, but suffice it to say that it never came close to meeting the hype that was precision ag.
Danny Bradbury reports in a recent story for BusinessGreen.com that the CIA’s non-profit investment arm has recently invested an undisclosed amount in ImageTree – the Precision Forestry company. Talk about spooky – I deleted this a couple of times, but in the end I couldn’t resist.
Having shared an office with a forestry type for 3+ years, I know that the holy grail for foresters is to use remote sensing to determine forest stand volume. Well this is exactly what ImageTree claims to be able to do, right down to the individual tree. How are they able to do this – a combination of LiDAR and high res color infrared imagery (CIR).
Is this the killer “precision” app for the LiDAR industry? Time will tell, but the at least the CIA is impressed.
