DNR outlines shift to lidar and aerial imagery to map Washington’s forests
Department of Natural Resources officials described a move from expensive, ground‑based forest inventories to a remotely sensed, lidar‑and‑imagery approach that can produce high‑resolution data statewide at lower cost but with technical tradeoffs around canopy-only detection and IT requirements.
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Chair Reeves opened the House Agriculture and Natural Resources interim session by inviting the Department of Natural Resources to describe “innovations in state land management.” Cameron Crump, DNR’s Forest Resources Division manager, told lawmakers the agency moved in 2013 from a traditional, plot‑based inventory—300,000 five‑acre plots covering 1.7 million acres—to a remotely sensed system that combines field plots, lidar, aerial imagery and statistical models to produce 3‑D, tenth‑of‑an‑acre inventory estimates across DNR lands.
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