The Open Forest Observatory, a collaboration across universities and other partners, is working to make low-cost, AI-enabled drone-based forest mapping accessible to ecologists, land managers, and the general public.
The OFO tools in development will be usable by groups and individuals with limited background in drones and remote sensing. All of our work is open-source (see our work on GitHub). We are keen to collaborate with anyone interested in using and/or contributing to our tools. Learn how to contact us.
Our projects
Forest map database
The forest map database we are developing will contain individual tree-level maps of over 100 forest stands (~ 25 ha each) across California and the western U.S. and enable individuals worldwide to contribute their own datasets.
View the prototype ...Forest mapping tools
We are building a set of easy-to-use cloud-based (and locally runnable) apps to allow users to process their own drone imagery into individual-tree forest maps using current best-practices as defaults.
Learn more ...