Presenting at ACF 2017 in Tahoe

Greetings from the beautiful shores of Lake Tahoe!  We're exhibiting at the Association of Consulting Foresters meeting in Incline Village, Nevada.  We're giving lots of demos of the new Plot Hound customization features and our new and powerful (and free!) plot layout tool in Canopy.  We're also excited to be bringing the power of remote-sensing to all consulting foresters with our CruiseBoost service.  We've spent the last year automating much of our satellite image analysis so that foresters working on properties as small as 40 acres can still take advantage of the power of remote sensing.

It's always great to meet consulting foresters using Plot Hound and CruiseBoost to make their inventory work easier - swing by the booth if you're in town!

SilviaTerra founders Max and Zack

trying to figure out what to do with their hands

Plot Hound is turning 6, and we're celebrating with a brand new version!

For the last six years, SilviaTerra has been striving to build the best possible mobile cruising experience. Our 100% free Plot Hound application has been put to use in plots across the country (and the world!), with continuous improvement that has only been possible thanks to the feedback and suggestions from the thousands of cruisers who have used Plot Hound.

That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ll soon be making Plot Hound ever better with a major new release. Version 6.0 will be out this summer, and it’s packed with new features. The biggest change is custom data types and validation. This means you’ll have the ability to go beyond a few generic data entry fields, increasing flexibility and reliability of your data. We know every cruise is different, and now that Plot Hound is being used all over the world it’s more important than ever that we can tailor the cruising experience to you.

Want to use the new Plot Hound on an upcoming cruise? Feel free to reach out to us at support@silviaterra.com. We’re now officially opening the version 6 beta signup - for both Android and iPhone.

New to Plot Hound? Find out more at https://silviaterra.com/bark/plothound.html

Launching the "Biometrics Bits" column in the Forestry Source

We're excited to announce that the SilviaTerra biometrics team just published its first "Biometrics Bits" column in the Forestry Source - the Society of American Foresters newspaper. Our first article explored the question - "What is the 'Right' Amount of Inventory Information to Collect?"

Using the fantastic FIA dataset, SilviaTerra's Lead Biometrician Dr. Nan Pond simulated many different cruising methods and intensities. Using this approach, we arrived at a rigorous and quantitative answer to the question "when does spending an additional dollar on inventory result in less than a dollar's worth of better management decisions?" in a variety of forest types in the US.

We're excited to share our thoughts on biometrics with the wider forestry community - stay tuned for plenty more articles!

Brian Clough joins SilviaTerra

The SilviaTerra team is thrilled to announce our newest member, Dr. Brian Clough.  Brian comes to us after completing several years of postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota.  He brings a great set of skills to complement our current biometrics team, including experience with biomass and carbon modelling, and a solid background in Bayesian modelling techniques.  

Brian is originally from the northeastern US, where he earned his PhD in Ecology and Evolution at Rutgers University.  SilviaTerra’s remote work system will allow him to continue to call Minnesota home for the time being. He’s already hard at work improving our automated height modelling systems, along with learning about the rest of our systems.  Welcome, Brian!

Some of the SilviaTerra team, together for a recent development week

(L:R Nan Pond, Mike Holkesvik, Brian Clough, Henry Rodman)