Using Drones for Conservation and Development with Dan Staley

Episode Overview

Episode Topic

In this episode of Timber Talks, we get into the fascinating world of Urban Forestry & Drone Technology with Dan Staley, the principal of Arbor Drone LLC. The discussion centers around the integration of advanced drone technology into forestry management, highlighting its transformative impact on the industry. Dan shares his journey from working with early satellite imagery to pioneering the use of drones for urban forestry. He discusses significant milestones in drone development, including the transition from military use to sophisticated quadcopters capable of detailed environmental monitoring. This episode offers a comprehensive overview of how drones are revolutionizing urban forestry, enhancing efficiency, and providing new insights into tree health and forest conservation.

Lessons You’ll Learn

Listeners will gain valuable insights into the practical applications of Drone Technology in Urban Forestry. Dan Staley explains how drones are used to assess tree health, monitor invasive species, and conduct post-fire restoration. He shares specific examples, such as the project in Denver to evaluate the emerald ash borer invasion, showcasing how drones can provide critical data that informs management decisions. Additionally, Dan discusses the challenges and opportunities in scaling drone technology for broader applications, including fire risk assessment and urban development. This episode will equip forestry professionals and enthusiasts with knowledge about the latest advancements and practical tips for integrating drone technology into their operations.

About Our Guest

Dan Staley, the principal of Arbor Drone LLC, is a leading expert in the field of Urban Forestry & Drone Technology. With an extensive background in urban forestry and remote sensing, Dan has been at the forefront of integrating innovative drone solutions into forestry management. His journey began in grad school under the guidance of Marina Alberti, where he first explored the potential of satellite imagery for environmental monitoring. Since then, Dan has dedicated his career to advancing drone technology, making significant contributions to the field. At Arbor Drone LLC, he leads pioneering projects that leverage drone technology for urban forestry, post-fire restoration, and invasive species monitoring.

Topics Covered

This episode covers a range of topics related to the historical evolution of drone technology, detailing its transition from military applications to its current role in forestry management, particularly highlighting advancements like multispectral sensors and stable drone platforms. He discusses Arbor Drone’s impactful projects, including invasive species monitoring and post-fire landscape assessments, demonstrating the practical benefits of drones in enhancing efficiency and accuracy in environmental monitoring. The conversation also delves into challenges such as regulatory complexities and ongoing innovations in drone technology, emphasizing their potential to further improve sustainability and conservation efforts in forestry. Overall, the episode underscores how drone technology is transforming traditional practices, promoting environmental stewardship, and shaping the future of forestry management.

Our Guest: Dan Staley – The Next Frontier of Drone Technology in Urban Forestry

Episode Transcript

Episode Transcript 

Introduction: Welcome to Timber Talks, the podcast where we interview experts in the forestry industry sharing trends, insights and best practices in the field. Be sure to subscribe to the show and leave us a review.

Mindy: Welcome to another episode of Timber Talks, the podcast, where we dive deep into the world of forestry and the innovations transforming the industry. I’m your host, Mindy, and today we have a special guest with us, Dan Staley, principal of Arbor Drone LLC. Dan has extensive experience in the field, and his company is at the forefront of integrating drone technology into forestry management. Welcome, Dan. So I know drones have have just been, you know, everywhere it seems. Um, so what inspired you to integrate drone technology into forestry management?

Dan Staley: Um, boy, how far back do we want to go in grad school? Um, my advisor is Marina Alberti. She’s a land land cover change modeler. And back then. Well. I’m old. Back then, um, all you had was a 256 color grayscale, um, uh, satellite imagery. And so I worked on a project to try and find open planting spaces for trees in Seattle using, um, uh, satellite imagery. And that just got me going from there. I, uh, my undergraduate degree was in urban forestry and and having the opportunity and the luck, uh, to be able to work on these, uh, at the time, uh, groundbreaking, uh, very powerful computers with some satellite imagery. Uh, that’s  what got me started.

Mindy: Okay. Um, can you share some historical milestones in the development of drone technology for forestry? So you went from I’m assuming you’re talking about GIS.

Dan Staley: Yeah. So, going backwards, the, the historical milestone really was,  Ronald Reagan sending a photographer, to a factory in Southern California and discovering Marilyn Monroe, who was working on drones at the time. And so she, uh, her very first images were of her in a factory, uh, holding a drone, um, and her working on the engines for that drone. And those drones were used for target practice for the World War Two pilots. And so that’s, uh, essentially where the, uh, the knowledge, uh, got started. Um, uh, the imagery, uh, the drones use was started the space program and the very first satellites going up in the military and the scientists wanting to see what, um, uh, what the Earth looked like from space. Um. Uh, one of the very first multispectral sensors that got sent up was at the insistence upon a, uh, woman scientist at NASA who, uh, insisted that we put up a multispectral sensor. And she got one of those on the early Landsat, um, platforms in space. And the second that the first images came in, everybody said, , I knew it, it was my idea. And, uh, and, uh, uh, it just went from there. So from drones, um, in the, uh, the, the mid 1990s, uh, people started to try and, uh, get these, uh, a little bit better than, uh, hovercraft or helicopter type, uh, instruments, uh, from the radio controlled airplanes, um, to to to be a little bit more stable where you could fly them and hover and take pictures and all that sort of thing. So the, the, the modern drone movement with the, with the quadcopters and that sort of thing, uh, started in the mid 1990s with some, uh, innovators and some, uh, inventors and some engineers trying to make a better helicopter, really, so it wouldn’t crash. It was easier to fly. And so now we have, basically anything you can think of, uh, you know, FPV and racing drones and fixed wing and all that sort of thing. So it’s come a long way.

Mindy: You can. How has Arbor Drunk contributed to advancements in this field? And can you provide an example of a successful project?

Dan Staley: Oh, boy. I like to think it has. So, what we’re doing now or. Well, let me say a successful project would have been, uh, we had a contract with the city and County of Denver to  assess the emerald ash borer,  potential invasion from Boulder County. And so we went out and looked at the, all the, the, the trees and the ash trees on the, on the northwest part of town, which is, Boulder is northwest of Denver. And so we went out and looked and assessed those and, and tried to get a handle on ash tree health from the air. And was likely, uh, ingress,  opportunities for the emerald ash borer. And at the time we were working on that and making those flights. Um, interestingly, a landscape architect had driven in from Boulder that day, and it looked like he had a, an emerald ash borer hitchhiker on his car. And and so the forestry department went out and, and, uh, and, uh, and climbed a couple trees and, and did some, uh, draw knife work and tried to see if they could find any in the trees, uh, nearby. And they weren’t able to, but at any rate,  we looked at, uh, the, the Denver Urban forest,  in that neighborhood,  for several years and were able to,  go so far as identify which ash trees had been treated and injected, um,  And  we were able to, make some advances with that. And so now what we’re doing is we’re doing this will probably be our last year of flying, but we’re, doing a lot of post-fire, um, uh, restoration work, especially in the lnu and the CCU complex fires in Northern California. And looking at the, um, the ability of the oaks to regenerate post-fire.

Mindy: Oh, okay. All right. So, um, is there anything besides the forest fires and invasive species, whether it’s insects or plants, any other type of projects that you’re doing with drones? That would be kind of.

Dan Staley: Wow.  yeah. Sorry. um, what we’re doing.

Mindy: Wow. But, yeah, I mean, uh.

Dan Staley: Right. Yeah. what I’m working on, what I’m working on now is, uh, probably next week. I’ll fly again. It depends upon the weather and the low clouds, but, uh, we’re working on, , a set of algorithms that I have,that look at tree health. And so just taking a drone flying anywhere or any kind of forest or woodland and, being able to assess tree health that way. And it’s, harder than it looks.  it seems like either family, genus, there’s a break in there somewhere, where you use a particular algorithm,  for forest health that may work,  in general over a large area with a number of species, some, some species or genera, uh, that works, and sometimes it doesn’t. And so, as long as, you know, for example, here in this area, we’ve got, uh, all kinds of different things from eucalyptus, different conifers and that sort of thing. So, for example, eucalyptus has a different, uh, reflectance profile because it’s got a lot of red in its leaves in it. Um, and so it will reflect a little bit more red. And in some eucalyptus, um, absorb a little bit more red.

Dan Staley: And then so they mask their ability, for chlorophyll to express itself in the, in the red end of the spectrum. And so, it’s, it takes, uh, different algorithms depending upon, uh, what, what genus or species you’re looking at to pull out plant health. And so the goal, um, this summer is to see if I can nail down a particular algorithm that can get maybe 80% of the tree species and including. That’d be great. Yeah.  including eucalyptus, to give us an idea of tree health across the,  the urban forest landscape. also, it looks like I’m, uh, I don’t have the signatures on this yet, but it looks like I’ll be looking for a different pest this year. polyphagous shot hole borer. And so that’s moved up from Southern California into northern California here, into the Bay area. So it looks like I’ll be looking for that as well. So that’ll be a a new pest. I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull that out of the trees, that it likes to, to eat. But, we’ll see how that goes and see if we can find that also.

Mindy: Okay. So you’re developing not necessarily a new technology, but,  a new program that drones can use to gauge plant health before you put feet on the ground, so to speak.

Dan Staley: Yeah. So it’s aerial remote sensing. And so we’re, we’re using the data that come out of the, the sensors that are on board, you know, whatever, whatever flying aircraft there is, and take those data and, and pull those data apart and, and redo those data to, to to use that information for, for plant health.

Mindy: Okay. All right. Um, what new drone technologies or features are you most excited about?

Dan Staley: Um, I think it depends upon exactly what you’re what you’re looking for. But for the boots on the ground sort of people who may be, um, you know, either looking at trees in the urban area or in the wildland urban interface or whatever. I think the, the, the, the drones that are out now that have the proximity sensors to them,  the DJI type, uh, aircraft or the, uh, any of the few other, aircraft out there that they’ve got the proximity sensors. So you so you don’t fly directly into a tree, you know, you may it may not see a tiny little branch, but, you know, it’ll see the rest of the tree. Those things help a lot. Um, and especially in a forest or, uh, in a woodland. those things can really help, uh, prevent a crash. Uh, as long as there’s more than just, you know, one tiny little branch that’s, you know, finger size. Anything bigger than that, it can see. I think that helps a lot. Um, the visual sensors that are out now are, um, several of them are are better than,  cell phone, uh, imagery. And so, 20 megapixel sensors, uh, some are 48 megapixel pixel sensors. Some of them have, uh, decent, um, electronic zoom on them, that sort of thing. So a couple of the new aircraft that are out now have got, uh, ten times zoom. Um, that work pretty well. It’s fairly good. Um, better than, uh, better than a cell phone, uh, camera. And so those can be particularly useful when you’re scanning one tree or multiple trees.

Mindy: Came when you started? Were drones being made? Um, mainly used for or in forestry to monitor tree health and etc.? Or did, um, they, did you find using them more in an urban environment?

Dan Staley: For me, it was all. It’s always been urban. I’m, uh. I’ve been, uh. I like to think I’m an urban ecologist type, uh, urban forester. And so the wild land stuff, um, I like, uh, because I think it’s an interesting problem. The wildland urban interface is as an interesting, uh, problem that our society and other societies have as more people get on the earth and they, move out into the woods, um, there’s, uh, with climate change, there’s more of a danger of fire. And, uh, so we have to take that into account. And so, um, I’m a climate change guy, and I’m, uh, speaking in Atlanta, uh, at isa on climate change. And so that’s,  you know, I’ve been doing that for longer than I’ve been doing forestry. So,  that’s really what I care about. And so in the urban environment, uh, climate change with the urban heat island is, is the thing that I really care about there. So when I started with the drones, it was mostly,  agriculture. And there was some forestry done, but it was harder, uh, back then to have a decent drone with a decent sensor on it and fly that in a way where you could, you know, get more than 50 hectares worth of data in a day and do something with it. And now with the, computing power the way it is now and, uh, it’s, made that a lot easier. So now we have hyperspectral sensors that we can put on drones and take that, you know, couple terabytes worth of data and actually store it on a drone and then download it and do something with it, you know, in a day or two days. And that’s helped a lot. Did I answer your question? Was that.

Mindy: Okay?

Dan Staley: Is that what you wanted?

Mindy: Yeah, yeah. When with with my experience, I’ve used my drones and eggs. So that’s why I was, I sort of saw this for agriculture or at least saw this coming many years ago and decided I would take the leap. So I typically use mine for AG. Versus forestry. So I was just curious where you saw the beginning, you know, the the initial use of drones past the military. Um, whether it was urban or or agriculture. what are how do you foresee these technologies impacting forest conservation and management practices?

Dan Staley: Yeah, it’s real interesting. So of course, I’m in the United States. it’s different in different countries that a lot. There’s countries that allow, , some pilots and some companies to fly beyond visual line of sight. And we can’t do that yet,  in many parts of North America. And so that’s a, that’s an impediment. And once that impediment is gone, you know, for whatever reason, it’s still here. And we haven’t, you know, it’s probably a different podcast to talk about why we can’t fly beyond visual line of sight yet, but, what where I see it going is,  that, uh, a number of different things and, and they’re all, um, wrapped around fixed wing and being able to fly fixed wing aircraft. They’ve got a longer range. they can cover more area. Um, and so when you’re thinking about in my view,  when you’re thinking about cities or even in the wildland urban interface, a couple hundred acres or, you know, 100 hectares, that sort of thing, when you’re when you’re looking at that sort of area, you really want a fixed wing. And so the fixed wings that are out there now are perfectly capable of Trinity, fixed wings with the VTOL, they, they take off vertical takeoff and then they go and they can fly for an hour, cover 500 acres, 250 hectares or so. Um, I think that’s really where it’s going. And their payload is about a kilogram or so, which is a real nice, sensor with, uh, multiple filters on it and multiple lenses, that sort of thing. So in the forestry aspect, now that we’ve, well, in some places that they’re able to fly, you see the papers that are coming out now, the different fixed wings that are being used to fly to test  researchers ideas with respect to, um, uh, canopy closure or individual tree canopies and the health of individual trees.

Dan Staley: And so the a pest doesn’t spread across a,  you know, a tree farm or a that sort of thing. Uh, that’s that’s where it’s going right now. And so they’re able to, you know, pick apart those individual trees either using photogrammetry or lidar, uh, a lot cheaper to do it, photogrammetry. And so you’re starting to see the cost effective of photogrammetry, photogrammetric techniques,  not using lidar of the individual canopies and the individual tree health.  and, you know, across a wider scale.  so that’s, that’s where that’s going, I think with the wildland urban interface work in the, North America,  you’re able to see.  You’re able to see, at a much finer scale, much finer detail, the individual plants that may be problematic for fire suppression or fire control,  or fire avoidance, uh, fire mitigation type techniques for landscaping, to come up closer to structures and that sort of thing. So,  those you’re starting to see the papers that come out with, uh, both visual and with spectral imagery starting to tease apart those problems and come up with solutions, rapidly. you know, it maybe, are fine with the university budget, but none of us, uh, have university budgets. And so how do we do, uh, lower costs, uh, techniques to try and tease out, these data and make them usable for clients.

Mindy: So that,  the urban and forestry area,utilizing this technology, the advancements in technology would make it easier to possibly prevent forest fires.

Dan Staley: I think so.  yeah, I think as long as. Yeah, it as long as you get, you know, people on the ground that are, you know, willing to, uh, thin their trees and, and, uh, you know, clear some of that, you know, the, the flammable material, uh, leading up to things that could ladder up into the canopy and then start blowing over, that sort of thing. So it’s all about, you know, the, the initial having, the ability to, to describe and show, the, uh, you know, the problem. And so,using a fixed wing or even a rotary wing aircraft say you’ve got 30 or 40 acres, you know, you can fly that in less than an hour. and then show your client,  you know, concrete things out of this aerial mapping and, and, some oblique photographs of, you know, exactly what you’re thinking about and having that ability for the client to to visualize exactly what it is a before and after. Um, uh, that’s a good technology. That’s can be, a lot more widely available once, you know, more people can fly their drones.

Mindy: So do you expect, let’s say, in the next five years, that’s going to be a standard practice of, force management professionals as to, evaluate those areas between the forestry and urban development to cut down on, on forest fires. because, you know, we we typically and I’m in North America typically are concerned or hear about forest fires starting in forests. And then, you know, when they head into the urban environment, then, you know, it’s a big issue. You see it all over the news, what is always been a big issue. But do you think that this, the fixed wing, more information that we can get from drones? Do you think that’s going to be a tool in a forest toolbox to monitor as a way of monitoring those areas before putting boots on the ground to prevent a problem?

Dan Staley: Yes. And I think it’s important at this point that we we talk about scale. And so the drone scale is generally, I would say, no more than 100 to 200 acres or 50 to 100 hectares. before, you’re, you’re just running out of time. And the ability of a of a regular rotor wing drone, to image an area, a fixed wing drone, you can do more like, uh, anywhere from five, six, 700 acres, 350 hectares a day, during the best light with a fixed wing drone. And so, as long as you can get the clearance to fly a fixed wing drone, you know, out a mile, two miles, that sort of thing, beyond visual line of sight. As soon as we can get that, you know, five years ago. Right. As soon as we can get that going, you can you can take any of the aircraft that are out there now, any of the fixed wing, drones that are out there now. it and and, you know, expand your scale. So, so regular rotor wing drone, 100 acres, 200 acres, you know, 100 hectares. Fixed wing drone, 500 acres, 250 hectares. Now, then, go up to the aircraft piloted aircraft. You know you can cover hundreds of miles a day on there. So it’s the scale of the remote sensing that you’re looking at. And then so once you can get that, um, going and you can get regular flights, you need sensors, right? So you have to have sensors to put on these aircraft.

Dan Staley: And once you get those sensors out there, you know, wherever the money comes from. Once you can get those going up, you know, then you can get that. And so what I’m working for is so for for the utility of vegetation management. And so from the fire prevention and assessment management point of view, is being able to take the sensors, fly those out, have a, have a thousand hectares and then be able to use the, you know, my software, um, to be able to assess plant health and to get a better idea of, of fire risk, or maintenance needs at that time. And so it’s all about scale and being able to, to fly at scale. And so being, you know, the laws allowing drones or aircraft or drones, it’s the law being able to fly beyond visual line of sight for aircraft. You have to have the sensor. Right. And so, it’s just a matter of making specs for the sensor and getting the sensor and getting on an aircraft and flying it. Long, long answer. Uh, and a little bit of a rambling answer, but it’s a not quite been solved yet. And so we have to think about what scale we want to operate. And then, so then we can solve that problem depending upon the scale.

Mindy: Okay. are some cities hiring drone operators or hiring you to evaluate, fire risk of potential areas that they want to develop? You know, if a new subdivision wants to come in. 

Dan Staley: The the the the real clue. The the short answer is. Uh, no. Every once in a while, you get one, a scattered one here and there. And the short answer for the no is because, generally in the wildland urban interface, out here in the West, uh, those are rural areas, and they just don’t have that kind of money. And so, there has to be grant money out there somewhere, and somebody has to make that grant program available. the workaround right now is the Nape in Madrid, uh, and some other national imagery, or even, the people looking, uh, hiring somebody to look at Google Earth just to, you know, try and get their minds around,  you know, the data on Google Earth Engine. And so it’s all about money. And so when you’re talking about urban forestry, you know, it’s the budget that the city has for the taxation, you know, in the rural areas is, you know, is it a rural landowner? Um, you know, who isn’t, ready to log their property yet?  you know, but maybe in 15 years they are. And that’s their retirement, that sort of thing. So,  it’s a it’s a,  because of the patchwork, um, ownership of land across the western United States.

Dan Staley: It makes it really difficult to,  for a rural area to   number one, get their minds around it, get their, you know, have some money to look at it and then coordinate all the, the different landowners, out there. So that’s a, it’s a if it were an easy problem, uh, to, to solve, you know, we wouldn’t, uh, have some of these issues, I think that we have right now. and, it’s like herding cats, really, to  try and to try and get your, your mind around the, the, the issues in the wildland urban interface. And I bring that up because, that’s where a lot of the thinning needs to go. But we’ve got structures in second homes and first homes in there, and those, uh, burns get out of control. And and, you know, they can, uh, you know, burn somebody’s home down, and then you’re in trouble. And so there’s I know of an instance some years ago now it was up in Trinity County in California, and they were doing some controlled burns, uh, near the town of Weaverville. And the, sparks flew into some dead, we have this, weed out here called Yellow Star Thistle. And the sparks flew out of the star thistle and caught and burned down part of the, the high school and, uh, the only good part I know, and, the wind just picked up and it’s that kind of thing.

Dan Staley: And so when you’ve got so many homes in the wildland urban interface, it makes it hard to manage with fire. And so, the Forest Service here, out here, Cal Fire, everyone’s trying to, you know, wrap their minds around, you know, carbon sequestration and keeping,  trees on the land for, water storage, that sort of thing. And then,  thinning enough to, you know, keep the fire suppression going. And it’s just a it’s a giant effort.  and so,  again, we bring in the drones at the smaller scale, you know, at the landowner scale. Right? And then the fixed wing,  you know, at the county scale and then the aircraft, you know, goes from the county, you know, all the way to the state. And then so now you’re looking at, um, aerial remote sensing from space, and there’s some satellites that are out there now that have got 30 centimeter resolution in the and the multispectral resolution is a meter, which is pretty good. Yeah. So one meter resolution for space is good. Yeah. Go ahead.

Mindy: So we do see down the road maybe in the next ten years, having the land evacuated with the drone would be commonplace, like soil percolation, a soil percolation test. If you wanted to to build a subdivision, it must pass a soil percolation. In my area at least, um, has to pass a soil percolation test. So do you think in the, let’s say, the next ten years, that drone evaluation of the fire risk and the health of the plant material and etc. is just going to become commonplace as far as urban development.

Dan Staley: I do, and it’s all dependent upon sensor development. And so that’s the thing that I think the whole and what we have is the sensor development right now. and I know it’s being worked on, and I know there’s people and companies out there that that have their own sensors or developing their sensors or, getting,  their minds wrapped around how to put a sensor on the bottom of something, you know, a bigger, heavier sensor like a kilogram plus payload. And so once those are more commonplace, the answer will be yes. And so hopefully in ten years, that development will go forward. It’s hard to, you know, predict, you know, where the money is going to go and, that sort of thing. But, I think, you know, the, the climate change is getting worse. So we’re starting to see worse fires. And already, you know, in, northern BC in Alberta.  you know, those fires overwintered. And they’ve they’ve sparked up again. And so I think once you start seeing, you know, more instances of this, unfortunately there will be a little bit more impetus for, for fire protection and just plant health in general. You know, when you’re  looking at, electricity generation, either by wind or solar, from distant places like,  people want to do instead of putting it on your roof, they want to have, generation distant places and then wire carry that power,  you know, to where the people are.

Dan Staley: You’ve got to have, transmission line clearance. And so there’s a lot of companies that,  that,  make a lot of money doing transmission line clearance. And so once the drones can fly beyond visual line of sight, there’ll be a greater need for transmission line, maintenance and clearance as well. And so that’ll be part of it. And so once you can get all that working together and then have that market out there, then you can develop the sensors to do, um, urban development, suburban development, uh, fire, um, mitigation, that sort of thing. Uh, climate change. Uh, so you can it’d be easier to quantify,  canopy cover, although we can do that pretty well from space right now.  but, the, the quantification of canopy cover for canopy cover goals,  that sort of thing, I think, I think ten years is probably a pretty easy goal to meet.

Mindy: Okay. What advice do you have for forestry professionals to prepare for these technology advancements?

Dan Staley: I think,  not everybody can be a pilot. Uh, it’s a mindset. And and so, finding and being open to finding enough pilots and, or maybe,  having some of your staff, you know, have the, you know, whatever be funded for half time, pilot work and then do whatever they need to do for the other half time. and so being open to that, so being open to also having, people, that can do technology either. pretty well. Let me do a little digression and come back. But pretty soon, we won’t need to have people that can code in R or in Python or in, C plus or something like that. Um, you’ll be able to have the, a large language model like ChatGPT or something, do that for you. And anyone will be able to do that within probably three years. and so I’ll be I’ll probably. Yeah. But  I well, I don’t want to say too much, but I’ll probably have I’ll start,  doing presentations next year. My, my presentation course is for next year will include, that, that you don’t need to, to do the formal courses. Now you just be able to do  natural language programming that way. And so, that’s one of the things that I see. And so having staff bringing this back around to your question. Having staff that are able to take large language models like the ChatGPT or the copilot or whatever you want to call it, and, and to be able to manipulate that and make prompts to,get outputs that,  other staff needs or that the department needs. And so being open to hire those people, being able to have your staff be able to interact with those people that may not be in the field all day and not, resent those people for not being out with boots on the ground and, you know, doing what it takes.

Dan Staley: and being able to find them and being able to, articulate, to a local university or something to allow forestry staff or urban forestry or horticulture or whatever, staff being able to sit in on some of these GIS or,  classes like that, to be able to get those skills and so maybe have a, the ability from somebody to say, like Stephen F Austin University, which is really good with this technology, you know, for I’m just using them as an example just to say, let’s here’s a ten hour certificate for, for programming or for technology or something like that and able to take that forward and or recognizable on a resume,  to do that sort of thing. So the software. A post-processing. Image manipulation. Data processing, that sort of thing is going to be more important. And so how can you work that staff. Um, requirement, you know, into into the people that you hire.  because you’re going to have to have nerds. And so, you know, what’s your staff mix in between a nerd and all your other people on the ground? Right. And so how can we how can we get our, our boots on the ground, people,  integrated with the 1 or 2 nerds that we need and keep them busy all the time is, is going to be the challenge, I think, here coming up in the next 5 to 10 years.

Mindy: Okay. Where are the key considerations when integrating drone technology into forestry operations?

Dan Staley: So you have to be able to think about scale. And so the the scale that I like to talk about it 25 acres and then 250 acres and then 2500 acres. Right. And so the drone, the fixed wing drone is the 25 or I’m sorry, the rotor wing drone is the 25, the fixed wing is the 250, and then the aircraft is a 2500. And then anyone can do a satellite. But it’s the the resolution that you need. So so the key considerations are are scale and then computing power. And having somebody able to manipulate uh sensor data. And so if you’ve got a multispectral sensor how many bands are there. What do those bands mean. So do you have a sensor without a blue band. So what’s your you know, so now you’ve got a serious restriction. If you just got a four band, you know, sensor on your fixed wing drone, you got serious. Um, restrictions on what kind of data you can analyze without blue. Right. And so now now what kind of sensor am I looking at? What are those bands? What does blue tell me? What does this what does this green wavelength give me? Now what are my red wavelengths. Right. So now I’ve got chlorophyll a in the red wavelength. And is it, is it of a good enough resolution. And can I crunch data well enough maybe. And get fluorescence out of a particular band out of, you know, red so I can see better chlorophyll activity in the red? Um, how many red edge bands do I have to see? You know, where where the drop off is for the plant health, that sort of thing.

Dan Staley: So getting your mind around what the sensors do, right. So sensors from space are really useful, but who who’s going to be able to. Can you find a firm somewhere that can crunch that data for you? Now, do you have a staffer that says I need to have, plant health? Okay, well, here it is. Here’s our plant health. And then does the staffer say, oh, this doesn’t make any sense. I need you to do this. I need you to do that. you know, it’s not what I’m looking for.  this image is saturated right here. You use the wrong vegetation index. I need you to, you know, use a different vegetation index to find chlorophyll because it’s saturated. It’s that kind of thing. So. So how do you get staff that’s able to interpret the data for for some GIS nerd who doesn’t know anything about trees or plants. Right. And so that’s um, uh, that’s going to be a key consideration moving on here. And so, so once you have, let’s say the, you know, horticulture degree or a forestry degree or something like that, and you’ve got your botany and your biology and you understand, um, you know, the Krebs cycle and how chlorophyll works. And once you once you’ve got that set of knowledge that it doesn’t take you long to make that leap into, you know, what sensors do. And then then you wrap your mind around, okay, I know my chlorophyll A and B work, you know, and these regions of the spectrum.

Dan Staley: And so I know I need to have, uh, you know, data collected in these regions. And now, um, you, uh, this is this is a conifer. And so this has extra red reflected out of here. So this may not work as well. So I need to suppress this red band, that sort of stuff. So once you get your mind around that and it doesn’t it doesn’t really doesn’t take long once you start looking at this stuff. Um, and, but you have to have a GIS background, you have to be able to look at the ESRI products or QGis or, you know, something like that to be able to, to manipulate those data. But it’s not it’s not much of a leap once you’ve got the, the, the botany background to, to to step into there and then. So now if you’ve got that. That botany background and that horticulture background. Now you’ve got the skills to be able to go out and get a company that can just take all the data and do whatever you know you want, and you can get that data that makes sense. And that’s the big that’s the big thing is does how do I make the data make sense? And so do these data. Um, do what I need to do. Know okay. I need you to, you know, do this for me instead and use these bands and, and manipulate the bands in this way to give me the output that I need. So the data makes sense. And that’s that’s the real big next step right there for people.

Mindy: Okay. Um. So what are the key considerations? I’ve talked about that when, um. Are there any other challenges that you foresee besides, um, getting the nerds being able to to wrap our minds around this new technology? Um, and interpreting the data and getting the sensors right so that the sensors are picking up on whatever information a person needs to answer a question. Um, do you see any other common challenges for forestry professionals besides what you’ve talked about?

Dan Staley: Um, for urban forestry professionals to use. Go ahead.

Mindy: Do you think maybe, uh, forestry discipline at the college level may need to change to sort of embrace this new technology, or at least, um, make foresters familiar with the technology?

Dan Staley: Um, uh, let me answer that in a couple of parts. The first part is I, um, uh. And I think it was maybe two years ago on arboriculture and urban forestry. I wrote a paper about that, of how to get people’s mind wrapped around where you need to go, and especially at the university level. I’ve got a section in there to talk about that. And so just to expand upon that a little bit, um, I kind of hinted at it before, if you can offer a couple more certificates, like a GIS certificate or something that people can take going forward, or they’ve already got their degree, they want to come back and, and, and get a GIS certificate or a remote sensing certificate or whatever that certificate is. Yes. I do think that we need more of that. Um, I also think that, um, when you’re say in a, in a forestry department, in a large, say, a top 50 city in North America or in Europe, um, uh, again, having your mind open to somebody from remote sensing. Um, that’s familiar with remote sensing, um, and integrating them either into your staff or having one of your staff able to speak to these nerds to get the information that you want out of there. And so how do they get that, you know, from the university level or from a self-paced, you know, any of these, any of these massive online courses and MOOC? Um, uh, you know, you can you can get at least a decent familiarity with, um, most of what we talked about from online courses, Coursera, uh, that sort of thing, even something like Khan Academy, you can get information out of there as well.

Dan Staley: And so,  having the ability to incentivize staff or give them time to, to learn about these things is important. Now jumping off of that and going,  a little bit,  separately. But related to what you said,  having,  your staff have ability to, to, to to go out and, um, maybe having a couple hours a week, you know, learn, um, what, uh, what a remote sensing output looks like. So here’s a map. And here are the, you know, the data. This is what they look like, interpreted. Now go out in the field and now look at this tree and so oh this tree. And I’ve got trained I still have training trees in Denver. Uh, this, this this tree has got anthracnose. This is what anthracnose looks like. This is what drought stress looks like. Look at all the red reflected out of here. There’s a ton of red in here that’s generally indicative of drought stress, especially in,  you know, the oak, genus. Right. And so, giving them the ability to go out and get that relationship from what it looks like from the air, you know, down on the ground, I think that’s a another key component as well.

Mindy: Minterm. All right.  well, thank you, Dan, for sharing your insights and expertise with us today. It’s been a fascinating discussion on the role of drones and forestry and what the future holds to our listeners. Be sure to check out Arbor Drone, LLC at UrbanRail.Net to learn more about their innovative work. Don’t forget to follow and subscribe to Timber Talks for more episodes on the latest in forestry. Until next time! I’m Mindy and this has been Timber Talks. So do you have any questions for me, Dan?

Dan Staley: Nope. I’ll just,  you just the  the expectation is that, uh, on my website, I just, uh, you know, link to you guys, uh, when the recording comes out and I’ll put it on the Twitter and all that other stuff. Right.

Mindy: Well, I’m just the interviewer. I’m not the company. They just hired me because of my background to interview people. So. Dang. So, um, I see I just have to clarify that some people think I, I did all this, and. No, I I’m glad to see it. Um, we need more people in forestry and technology and a bunch of stuff. Yeah.

Dan Staley: So so so so you’re flying AG right now. What kind of crops do you fly?

Mindy: I have a very, very I can’t even tell you the model to be. Absolutely. I actually bought them to I was doing a project with farmers, um, because this is how long ago it was they had to buy. They had to pay a drone operator, you know, a huge drone come in. So, um, I got my first drone to test out this idea I had. So I’m use it for myself personally on a property that I own. Um, my goal was to create a wearable drone for farmers that when they were on their combines, if they saw a problem, they could let a drone go up in the air, um, because they had remote sensing, most of them on their combines. But. Um, that didn’t quite go as well as what I had thought, but, um, then the FFA got involved and, you know, the, the licensing and was going to require firemen to be licensed and stuff. So, um, I kind of backed off on that venue and I just used my three drones. If I have a person that wants me to come out just as a friend will bring them out, but they’re just the really small, um, they they were the very first ones, one step lower than the commercial sized ones. So they were very basic. But it’s been very many years ago, um, since I bought a drone. But I saw the technology coming and, um. I’m. When I was in college. Um. It just seems so unfair to me with the remote sensing and the GIS and stuff, that it was really putting the small farmers out of business because they just couldn’t compete for many reasons. But one was the technology. And um. So my goal was to try to even up the playing field was what I wanted to do with the drone.

Dan Staley: So big business doesn’t want you to eat. They’re not the players.

Mindy: You know, I it took me a long time. I taught ag and in Louisville, Kentucky, taught at a city school. And I learned a lot. As as much as I want to change the world and make it a better place and make it fair. Uh, I can’t do it unless they’re going to let me do it. I don’t have a problem doing work, but you got to let me do it. And, um, so I, I mean, I’m coming from a farming background, and the reason I went into ag against. You know, there was only one other female when I, I graduated from Purdue in again, and I wasn’t deterred by that. But, um, in the 70s this kind of tells my age they were auctioned on the CBS news. They were auctioning off farmland, and there was this old farmer and coveralls and his wife, she’s sitting in a rocking chair, and they’re auctioning off their farmland because they couldn’t pay the taxes. And. I was like, there, you know? And at that time, education was going to solve all the problems. Well, that doesn’t solve all the problems all the time. So, um, I completely I have a big chip on my shoulder with my son Tope. I teach, teach Somaliland gardening classes for some different companies, and, um, you know. I’m always trying to steer away from that topic. But, um, anyway, make a long story short, that’s why I never turned it into a business. Because that wasn’t my goal. My goal was to get drones and and figure out a way that farmers, the small farmers, could kind of even up the playing field as far as using technology. Um, because I hate to see farmland if it’s a farmer to buy the farmland for production, I’m okay, but I just hate to see farmland get eaten up. In the subdivisions or strip malls or parking lots or whatever. Um, because the small farmer didn’t have the technology to compete. So.

Dan Staley: Yeah, yeah, that’s one of the, one of the things.

Mindy: It takes a bigger person. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Dan Staley: That’s okay. No, no,I’m definitely with you. You know, one of the things that my, um, grad advisor is really keen on when we’re in grad school was, um, she was a land cover change modeler, and you could, you could see in Washington state, you could see the big farms out here, and then the smaller farms, the smaller farms and the smaller parcels and get down, you know, and eventually, what’s the tipping point where, you know, this is going to be a housing development, you know, over here, that sort of thing. And, um, you can really see it out here in California. Boy, I mean, I it’s just so hard to be a small grower out here. There’s, I mean, you know, down in the valley floors, you know, 2000 acres is, you know, some company owned, you know, owning all the all the orchards for 2000 acres and their offices in San Francisco on the 19th floor. And,  you know, they never see that. And then,  you know, it’s sitting back there and everyone was growing corn, right? Or,  canola. Right. And that’s all they’re growing. And,  you know, it’s it’s how do you how do you even grow your own food? Right. And so that just you I think you and I are on the same page. It just drives me crazy. And I thought drones would be, you know, the thing where, you know, you could have the small guy. And like a small gal, right. And and, you know, fly the fly the drone for your client, you know, over their 20 acres or something like that. And it just doesn’t it doesn’t pencil out for anybody, you know, it’s just so hard to margins are so thin. The margins are so thin that it’s just, you know, it’s just brutal. It’s brutal.

Mindy: Right. And I just,  like in Indiana that the governor raised property taxes on farmland and $2,000 an acre. Now, I mean, if you own any sizable I know several farmers that, you know, were my my dad’s farm, one his dad was my bus driver when I was, but he’s he does quite well, but it doesn’t take too many years. A $2,000 an acre property taxes to not be doing well, you know, and it’s just like, you know, my dad was like, I don’t understand the motivation. I said, the motivation is to force the farmer to sell the land for a subdivision, and then you can earn more money per acre with the houses on the subdivision, and in building in the community I live now. But, you know, we’re going to to okay a subdivision for. 12 homes on five acres, or maybe more than that on on property that has five natural springs. And we know that, you know, it’s not going to pass the percolation test. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to put half basements in with sub pumps to pump the water away so you can have a house, you know, it’s just like just, a woman I used to see at the library, she owned the this guy that owned all this land was a farmer.

Mindy: And his last name was Whitsett. And she bought his house, and she didn’t want anybody living behind her. And he said, nobody will ever build there because it’s it’s got five natural springs they can’t build there. And they built their house. You know, I so I mean, to me it just doesn’t it doesn’t make any sense. But I have grandchildren and I want them to have. Rural environment and, you know, not have to go to a park to see a tree. And, you know, and I’m not the only person that feels that way. It’s just trying. To get enough momentum and power that people see what’s going on and, you know, take the stands. Not under my watch. This isn’t what we want for our community or this isn’t how we protect our farmland or, you know, all these other things. So and you’re right. Global warming is getting worse and it will continue to get worse. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. So. Well, some of ourselves, some of us have have tried to stop it. Yeah, yeah. But, wrong. It’s a very complicated problem. And for.

Mindy: Reaching the quarters is talking to you, Dan.