Utilizing the ‘Magic’ of LiDAR to Map Maine’s Outdated-Progress Forests

From our collaborating associate Residing on Earth, public radio’s environmental information journal, an interview by Jenni Doering with John Hagan, president of Our Local weather Frequent.

Within the distant northern half of Maine, forests dominate the panorama.

Whereas few individuals reside in what’s referred to as “unorganized territory,” timber corporations management huge swaths of land there and ceaselessly harvest timber for housing, furnishings, paper and extra.

However know-how is revealing hidden gems on this a part of the state.

The nonprofit Our Local weather Frequent has not too long ago begun utilizing gentle detection and ranging, or LiDAR, to seek out patches of biodiverse old-growth forest.

Dr. John Hagan is president of Our Local weather Frequent and holds a Ph.D. in ecology. This interview has been edited for size and readability. 

JENNI DOERING: Give us a way of what the forests in Maine are like for somebody who’s by no means been to the state. What sort of pure landscapes would they encounter there?

JOHN HAGAN: It’s dominated by Northern hardwoods and boreal spruce fir forest, and it’s monumental. It’s like 10 million acres; no person’s there however forest. It’s a extremely exceptional a part of the panorama that in New England we don’t actually admire. 

DOERING: On this huge wilderness, your group, Our Local weather Frequent, is utilizing a know-how known as LiDAR to map these forests. How does this know-how work, and what precisely are you attempting as an instance or uncover with these maps? 

HAGAN: We’re utilizing gentle detection and ranging, or LiDAR, to attempt to discover the old-growth forest within the 10 million acres. It’s like in search of a needle in a haystack. It seems that LiDAR is type of like a CAT scan of the forest. When you shoot LiDAR on the forest from an airplane, it offers you a three-dimensional signature of the forest. If you recognize artwork historical past, it’s type of like pointillism. It’s only a large three-dimensional level cloud of the forest. And it seems, that may inform us precisely the place the outdated forest is. About 4 p.c of that 10 million acres is old-growth forest. So not very a lot share clever, however that’s about 400,000 acres that you just didn’t know you had, and also you don’t wish to lose.

DOERING: How do you determine outdated progress utilizing these maps? How are you aware that what you’re taking a look at is a patch of old-growth timber?

HAGAN: We do the enjoyable half, which is exit on the bottom throughout this 10 million acres, and we go into forests—they’re known as stands—and we rating them primarily based on our ecological data. After which we come again into the lab and say, laptop, what did you see? That is what we noticed. What did you see? Then we prepare the pc to seek out the stuff that we discovered on the bottom. 

We will’t cowl 10 million acres on foot. I’d like to, however we are able to’t. So the LiDAR does that for us, and it’s extremely correct—greater than 90 p.c correct. Earlier than utilizing LiDAR to map it, we didn’t know the place it was. You needed to bump into it, the outdated forest, to seek out it or to find out about it. Now we’ve obtained a map. 

The older stands are blue magenta. Every little thing that’s youthful is yellows or oranges or gentle greens. You’ll be able to colour it any means you need, nevertheless it’s type of like a neon signal. It’s like, “Mild up this old-growth forest on the map.” I’m imagined to be a scientist, however to me, LiDAR and what it reveals you concerning the forest simply looks like magic. 

DOERING: Why is it vital to know the place these late stage old-growth forests, or I believe they’re known as LSOG, are? Why are they so essential to guard?

HAGAN: It’s not shocking that plenty of plant and animal species developed in an older forest panorama. They developed to rely on large, lifeless wooden. So once you don’t have large timber and large, lifeless wooden, you begin to lose a number of the species that evolve to rely on that. And so if we don’t maintain some outdated forest, we are going to lose that component of biodiversity. And outdated forests like LSOG have monumental shares of carbon; the shops are round 5 to 10 instances what a mean forest would maintain in present shares. So in the event you lose it, you lose plenty of carbon per acre. 

A 40-year outdated stand is rising quick, so typically will probably be sequestering carbon a lot sooner than an outdated stand, nevertheless it’s obtained an extended, lengthy method to go to get to the shares of an outdated forest.

DOERING: The New England Forestry Basis not too long ago acquired $4.3 million from the U.S. Forest Service, and your maps of Maine’s old-growth forests are enjoying a giant position in how they plan to make use of that grant. How are they making use of the info that you just’ve collected?

HAGAN: Many of the remaining LSOG forest is on industrial timberland, non-public industrial timberlands, people who find themselves within the enterprise of constructing wooden and paper and stuff like that. The problem is, how do you compensate landowners to maintain them as a result of they’re simply dropping out financially to allow them to develop. 

To us, the worth of the carbon in these outdated stands is value as a lot and perhaps somewhat greater than the timber worth. Then it simply turns into an financial transaction. Look, I personal this land. I’d usually reduce timber, but when the carbon is value extra, I’ll promote you the carbon and maintain the stand. So if the New England Forestry Basis has all this cash to pay landowners, let’s imagine, go right here first. 

DOERING: It offers you a spot to start out. These are the best precedence stands, so let’s defend that. 

HAGAN: That’s proper. And it could possibly be on public land and already protected. We don’t want to fret about that, but when it’s on industrial timberland, almost definitely it’s destined to be harvested within the subsequent 5 to 10 years. In order that’s why matching the monetary alternative with landowners might stop lack of these older stands like, proper now.

DOERING: Demand for wooden for furnishings, homes and different items isn’t stopping anytime quickly. So what about these youthful forests that might nonetheless inevitably be reduce down by these giant timber corporations? Wouldn’t additionally they finally change into old-growth, if left alone?

HAGAN: If left alone, they might, however they’re not going to be left alone, as a result of that’s not the purpose of the landowners. However you make an vital level that could be a fault or a flaw of some forest offset initiatives like, effectively, you protected that stand and that stand and that stand, however they’re simply going to chop one other stand as a result of we want a hard and fast quantity of wooden. It’s known as “leakage” within the carbon offset market, and it’s an issue. Issues simply transfer round like items on a chessboard, as a result of wooden is a globalized product. The environment is a worldwide entity. 

In our case, and what New England Forestry Basis plans to do is have landowners and take the proceeds from paying for the outdated stands and spend money on silviculture, forestry practices, on the opposite acres that might speed up the expansion of these stands in order that we don’t leak, and we don’t simply push the carbon off to another place and it results in the environment anyway. That’s why, ultimately, we should be rising extra carbon per acre, and that’s the best way forests will help with getting carbon out of the environment. However it’s complicated, and in the event you don’t cross all of the Ts, you find yourself not making a distinction.

DOERING: Why is it vital to work throughout totally different teams, bringing totally different stakeholders just like the timber business and conservationists collectively, versus simply attempting to dig your heels in and say, we’re not going to work with you?

HAGAN: My complete profession, I’ve been working collaboratively with individuals like fishermen and foresters, and I discover that they know stuff I have no idea. And if I don’t know what they know, I can’t remedy the issue that I’m attempting to unravel. , I obtained this concept, they usually say, effectively, that’s simply not going to work, John, the machine can’t get there. And so I didn’t know that. 

Within the conventional method to do battle, you by no means actually take the chance to respect the opposite particular person or perceive what they know and worth what they know. Once you do, it simply modifications the entire problem-solving panorama, and it really works. 

In Maine, particularly with this grant, we’ve obtained a possibility to all sit down collectively and say, “What ought to this appear to be within the yr 2100?” and say, OK, we are able to make it appear to be that. If we’re sensible about it and we collaborate, we are able to do it in another way this time, and this grant will assist transfer us that means.

DOERING: Do you have got a favourite spot within the forest, in considered one of these old-growth stands in Maine, and what’s it like there? 

HAGAN: In considered one of our stands that lit up in LiDAR, we went in and did measurements, we cored one tree. It doesn’t harm the tree; it pulls out a core of the tree, and then you definitely rely the rings to see how outdated the tree is. This tree was 253 years outdated, and it was typical of those outdated stands we’re discovering. After which I began eager about Henry David Thoreau, who walked by means of Maine in 1850-something, he might have walked by this tree, actually. 

That is type of foolish, however he might have walked by this tree as a result of it will have been 70 years outdated when he went by means of Maine. It was a seedling when the primary shot was fired at Lexington for the Revolutionary Battle. When you recognize you’re standing beside a tree that outdated, that’s been round that lengthy, it’s intangible. It’s particular. It’s identical to, wow. It places you in perspective.