Use of GPS and GIS for Vehicle Guidance and Silvicultural Monitoring
ABSTRACT Weyerhaeuser Company owns and intensively manages over 4 million acres of commercial forestland in the Southern US and 2 million acres in the Western US. Improving and monitoring on-the-ground silvicultural activities is a major priority and has proved to be an elusive goal to achieve. GPS-based guidance systems have been implemented for ground and air based vehicles throughout our Timberlands operations. Satloc's Airstar2000 is used for aerial fertilizer applications and the Trimble Ag170 is used for ground based operations such as fertilizer and herbicide application. The systems provide real-time guidance for the operators, providing improved treatment effectiveness and greatly increased confidence that the correct acreage is treated (or not treated). Technical, business process, and human factors in selecting, implementing and maintaining these systems will be discussed. Such issues as data preparation and compatibility, map production, GPS and differential reception, and training and support as well as lessons learned and ongoing opportunities for improvement will also be presented.
About the Author: David Gilluly lives with his wife and two sons in Tacoma Washington where he serves as Weyerhaeuser Company's Field Computing Specialist. In this capacity, he supports all aspects of the Company's use of GPS, hand held hardware and software, field mapping and other field forestry technologies. He supports Weyerhaeuser Timberlands operations in 7 Southern states, Washington and Oregon, and Uruguay. His role includes the technical and field evaluation and providing strategic direction for the use of these technologies. He formerly served as President of Forest Resources Systems Institute and has held a variety of research and field forestry positions. He holds a Master's Degree in Forest Management from Duke University. |