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News

  • New Faces at the Forest Society

    Anna Berry
    May 26, 2021

    Join us in welcoming Sarah Kern and Jack Minich to the Forest Society. Sarah is the new Creek Farm Education Program Coordinator and Jack is a Conservation Easement Steward.

  • Workshops for NH Forest Land Owners

    Naomi Brattlof
    March 11, 2021

    Are you a land owner in New Hampshire with questions about how to manage your property? Are you looking to change things up a bit as we turn the ...

  • Ecosystems: What my fish tank has to say about our forests

    aames
    March 1, 2021

    Easement Steward Abraham Ames shares valuable lessons he recently learned that translate from fishtank to forest.

Detecting Change in Conservation: The Value of Remote Sensing

An Article in Conservation Finance Network featuring Naomi Brattlof
January 27, 2023
Conservation Easements
Easement Stewardship
A view through green leaves in a forest.
Cole Conservation Easement (Photo: Ryan Smith)

By Sam Feibel

In 2019, The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (SPNHF) began using satellite imagery to monitor the 204,000 acres they conserve. Previously, they’d relied on photographs captured by low-flying planes. Director of Easement Stewardship Naomi Brattlof described the organization’s approach in the early days of remote monitoring.

“We used a volunteer pilot with staff hanging from the plane taking photos of properties,” she said.

Today, SPNHF no longer relies on pilots to detect illegal logging, construction, or other violations on their protected properties. Instead, they order imagery through remote sensing technology company Upstream Tech.

With data ranging from satellite photography and 3D elevation models to change detection and vegetation indices, companies like Upstream Tech help clients access perspectives that are impossible to obtain from the ground. This data is useful not only to a land trust monitoring a conserved wetland, but also to a corporation looking to verify carbon sequestration in a forest. This article explores an ongoing initiative of the Land Trust Alliance (LTA) that encourages land trusts across the country to explore the utility of remote sensing. As conserving land to protect ecosystem services and mitigate climate change becomes increasingly important to a wide range of organizations, intermediaries like Upstream Tech and others are working to improve the accessibility of remotely sensed data.

Read the full story in CONSERVATION FINANCE NETWORK:

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Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests54 Portsmouth St.Concord, NH 03301
Phone: 603.224.9945Fax: 603.228.0423info@forestsociety.org
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