Locating Cedar Using UAV LiDAR and Multispectral Imagery will be presented by Ally Kruper from the University of Washington, as part of the Olympic Natural Resources Center’s Rosmond Evening Talk Series.

Join us in person in the Hemlock Forest Room, 1455 S. Forks Ave, Forks, WA or via Zoom (https://washington.zoom.us/j/3834334539) on Thursday, Oct. 24 at 7 p.m.

Western redcedar (Thuja plicata Donn ex D. Don) is an iconic Pacific Northwest species with great cultural, economic, and ecological importance. Unfortunately, the abundance of western redcedar on the landscape today is a fraction of what it was historically.

Accurate mapping of current western redcedar locations can aid in its management and cultural uses. Additionally, remote sensing, such as LiDAR and multispectral imagery, can help achieve this work on larger spatial coverages. This talk will discuss results from a master’s thesis on using UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) multispectral imagery and LiDAR to train a model to identify and map western redcedar trees on the west side of the Olympic Peninsula, focusing on the T3 Watershed Experiment in the Olympic Experimental State Forest.

Talking points will include the background and motivation for the study, an overview of methodology and results, uses and importance of the results, and a discussion of the benefits and challenges of using remote sensing for this type of forestry application.

Ally Kruper is a recent Master of Science graduate from the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Ally has been involved with forestry research at the Olympic Natural Resources Center since starting as an intern in 2020 and is currently a full-time researcher at ONRC. She has worked on a variety of forestry-related projects for ONRC, culminating in the completion of her master’s study in June. Her research specialties include remote sensing, forest ecology, collaboration, and adaptive management.

The Evening Talk series is supported by the Rosmond Family Education Fund.