Digital Forestry

THE FUTURE OF FORESTRY

We are merging digital technology and cross-disciplinary knowledge to revolutionize an industry with tremendous economic and ecological impacts.

Forests support more than 11 million U.S. jobs and the forest products industry produces over $200 billion in products every year.

Forests also provide critical ecosystem services – including fiber production, carbon sequestration and freshwater protection – but their long-term sustainability is increasingly threatened by climate change, evolving markets and land-use changes.

Digital technology is vital to the sustainability and resilience of our forests.

A grassroots effort across the Purdue campus is leveraging digital technology with multidisciplinary expertise to measure, monitor and manage urban and rural forests to maximize social, economic and ecological benefits.

Forestry still operates largely on the basis of fundamentals with processes that are highly manual and analog. Purdue is digitally transforming forest management with the use of the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing.

By using advanced technologies and big data analytics, we are creating best practices for healthier and more productive forests worldwide.