By: Roger “Tripp” Lowe

Whether determining the basal area of a stand of trees, or the amount of particulate flowing in the adjoining stream, technology is changing the face of forestry and natural resource management in the 21st Century.

As the flagship forestry and natural resources school in Georgia, the faculty and administration of The University of Georgia’s Warnell School believe that preparing their students to use the latest cutting-edge technology is a requirement for ensuring that graduating students are competent professionals before entering the employment market.

And one of the most important tools revolutionizing the industry is Geographic Positioning Systems/Information Systems (GPS/GIS).

“Three to five-meter RMSE accuracy under canopy…”  “Thirty-meter Thematic Mapper multispectral satellite imagery…”  These could be parts of conversations you would overhear when wandering through some of the computer labs at the Warnell School. Students, regardless of their program, are incorporating space-age technology like GPS, satellite imagery, and GIS into their studies.

Many forestry and natural resource professional are probably familiar with some of the uses of GPS.  Others have probably seen the television commercials where a driver gets turn-by-turn directions from their handy “black box” mounted on their dash.  Or, some might have heard a fishing buddy’s stories of how they marked the coordinates of the best fishing spots on the lake and can navigate back to them with much ease. 

Well, Scott Danskin, a Ph.D. candidate from Ducktown, TN, is putting this technology to the test.  He is analyzing the performance of a range of GPS receivers across a variety of slopes, forest canopy and seasons out at the Warnell School’s GPS Test Course, located in the Whitehall Forest in Athens, GA.  The course consists of thirty highly accurate surveyed and monumented points, of which twenty-four are forested, three are on the edge of the forest, and three are out in the open.  Under canopy, Scott says that he has observed an increase in data accuracy when the low-cost recrational-grade GPS units are compared to the mid-range mapping-grade, and the high-cost survey-grade units.  “The technology is revolving so rapidly, it requires continuous evaluation so we can make use of these tools in the best, most cost-effective way possible”, Scott says.

Advances in space-borne imaging have enabled faculty to train land managers to evaluate large portions of the landscape at resolutions ranging from sub-meter, at which individual trees can be investigated, to 1-kilometer, which is suitable for analyzing large forests.  Students working with the Fiber Supply Assessment group at the Warnell School are learning to use research data to leverage the information contained in traditional forest inventories by fusing them together with information contained in satellite data.  Thus, studies have resulted in large-area, high-resolution forest inventory estimates that are used in resource supply and mill location analyses, policy and sustainability evaluations, and biomass and carbon tracking.

Thanks to the continued financial support of the Warnell School’s tremendously generous alumni, and to the hard work of faculty in securing external grant funds to purchase expensive first-generation technology, Warnell School students are graduating with a leg-up on students who receive their degrees at from other natural resource programs. The many employers who are familiar with hiring Warnell School graduates are comfortable with their hires because they know Warnell School students graduate with the skills and knowledge to use the latest technology in service to clients.

And while GPS/GIS is one of the more important technological advances influencing industry operations, continued rapid advancements in other specialty areas requires faculty in all Warnell School programs to maintain high-levels of knowledge about technological advancements and instruction on how to best use these new tools.

This information is almost immediately passed along to current students who are then instructed on its most relevant uses.


Roger “Tripp” Lowe (BSFR ’96, MSF ’02) is a Ph.D. student and Information Analyst II at the Warnell School responsible for assisting students, faculty, and staff in the implementation of GIS into their class/research projects and maintaining the Warnell School’s GIS database.

Photo by Rene Lautenschlauger