Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service

Technology Transfer Award

Commercialization Leading to Social Benefits

Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service

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FPTT Technology Transfer Award for development and commercialization of the Individual Tree Crown Suite, a software technology used to conduct comprehensive inventories of forests.

François Gougeon, Donald Leckie
Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service

In a vast and resource-rich country like Canada, separating the trees from the forest is an environmental and economic imperative.

As steward of 10 per cent of the world's forests, Canada and its $82-billion forest industry rely on both the quality and the speed of critical information gathered to assess the state of its most famous renewable resource.

Presently, public and private inventories of 143 million hectares of the country's most productive forests are based upon interpretation of photographic images. This process is as slow and tedious as it is imprecise.

A decade ahead of their time, two Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) research scientists, François Gougeon and Donald Leckie, have pioneered a new approach to sustainable resource management with a sophisticated computerized system that has modernized the way forest inventories could be conducted in Canada and around the world.

Known as the Individual Tree Crown (ITC) Suite, the integrated package of 35 software programs developed by the Canadian Forest Service colleagues at the Pacific Forestry Centre in British Columbia delineates, identifies and regroups individual trees through the computer analysis of high-resolution, remotely sensed digital images. Coupled with field sampling, the programs can be used with either airborne sensor imagery or the latest high-resolution satellite images to extract such valuable information as crown sizes, the formation and content of forest stands, and the location of damaged and dead trees.

The ITC technology provides an unparalleled degree of detail and accuracy needed to better manage vulnerable resources valued around the world as priceless social, economic and environmental assets. Crossing sectoral boundaries, the system benefits public and private forest managers as well as the remote sensing and forest survey industries.

With limitless potential, the technology is also considered as a versatile tool to assess olive groves, tropical forest biodiversity, urban forestry, park rehabilitation, biomass and carbon accounting for the Kyoto protocol.

Already in use in by CLC-Camint Inc. in Quebec, Ontario and the United States, the ITC system has attracted the attention of several European and South American countries and enhanced Canada's reputation as a leader in sustainable forest management.

Sponsored by:
The Impact Group

Research Money Inc.