{"id":826,"date":"2026-04-08T23:56:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T23:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/?page_id=826"},"modified":"2026-05-04T15:27:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T15:27:59","slug":"digital-forestry","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/digital-forestry\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Forestry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Digital Forestry<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Purdue Institute for Digital Forestry<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Forests cover nearly a third of Earth’s land surface, yet the tools used to measure and monitor them have changed little in decades. Most forest inventories in the United States are still conducted manually, covering less than 1% of forested land at any given time. Our Digital Forestry research program addresses this gap by developing and applying sensing technologies, artificial intelligence, and computational methods that make large-scale, precise forest measurement possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lab leads the Purdue Institute for Digital Forestry<\/a>, an interdisciplinary initiative that brings together researchers in forestry, engineering, computer science, and industrial design. The goal is practical: to measure, monitor, and manage forest ecosystems with a speed, precision, and scale that traditional approaches cannot achieve.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Research Areas<\/h2>\n <\/div>\n \n\n
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Area 1 \u2014 LiDAR-Based Forest Sensing and Inventory<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Conventional forest inventory requires surveyors to measure trees one by one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Area Details<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Area 2 \u2014 AI-Driven Tree Analysis and Simulation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Large-scale data collection only creates value if it can be efficiently analyzed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Area 3 \u2014 UAV and Multimodal Remote Sensing<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Our remote sensing work applies UAV-based platforms and multimodal AI frameworks to monitor forest ecosystems from the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Area Details<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Area 4 \u2014 Structural Diversity as an Ecological Framework<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Digital datasets are not only tools for measurement \u2014 they also open new theoretical windows into how forests work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Area Details<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-826","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":54,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1101,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/826\/revisions\/1101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/fnr\/nrsa-lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}