Remote forest and vegetation monitoring for park managers

Nothing beats a walk in the woods. We’re the first to admit that even the highest resolution imagery can’t capture the sounds, smells, and sights of the forest. But when it comes to not missing the forest for the trees, remote monitoring is a powerful tool for understanding changing forests and vegetation. That’s why we built Lens, an easy-to-use remote monitoring platform that allows you to harness the power of public and commercial geospatial data, regardless of technical expertise

Whether you’re tracking a beech leaf disease outbreak, taking inventory of storm damage, or checking up on property line encroachments, Lens can help park managers answer questions quickly, saving time so you can get back outside.

‍Ready to learn more and start using Lens? Book a 30 minute demo with our team or sign up for Lens today. We’ll show you how Lens can enable more efficient and effective care for the open spaces in your community.

Lens provides data and imagery at your fingertips

There’s no shortage of data in our world—the real question is whether it’s accessible and actionable enough to be useful. With Lens, you have access to decades of high-resolution images from a variety of sources, with no minimum order size. Whether your property is a single acre or 10,000, it takes only minutes to see what’s changed in the past twenty years.

In addition to dozens of commercial and public datasets, Lens can ingest your drone or orthoimagery for comparison and analysis. Even the highest resolution images need to be compared against others to quickly spot change, and this is where Lens can help make the most out of the imagery you already have.

Lens give you the tools to analyze and report on the parks and open spaces in your community, with no GIS expertise required.

Lens removes the technical barrier to geospatial data. We don’t just provide data; we give you unique analysis tools to ensure that data is actionable. Simply upload or draw your properties in Lens, inspect for changes across landscapes by comparing images and relevant data layers, visualize trends over time in areas of interest, and easily document observations and create automated reports for your team and community stakeholders.

Increase visibility for the public

In addition to powerful analysis tools, Lens allows users to easily share observations with the public. Share Links are interactive visuals designed for non-users to experience specific analysis and insights from Lens. Open the embedded Lens Share Link below in full screen using the bottom button on the right-side menu.

With Share Links, embedded imagery modals, and shareable Notes, users can provide visibility into ongoing projects. This is particularly useful for communicating the impact of long-term capital projects that are closed to the public. These interactive visuals can accompany blog posts, email updates, and any public communications efforts.

Use cases for park managers

Survey damage caused by pest and invasive insect outbreaks

Lens provides multiple index layers from NASA and the European Space Agency to help evaluate vegetation health and changes over time, revealing where pests have damaged trees. This layer measures vegetation vigor using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which indicates photosynthetic activity based on red (visible) and near-infrared satellite data.

Statewide land trusts like Colorado Open Lands have used vegetation layers to monitor tree damage from beetle outbreaks. Customers have also leveraged Lens to track threats to forest health, including Oak Wilt, Beech Leaf Disease, and more.

In New York, vegetation layers in Lens have been employed to monitor the impact of invasive spongy moths. The image below compares two views of the same area: the true-color image on the right makes it difficult to identify damaged trees, while the image on the left, using a Lens NDVI vegetation layer, clearly highlights affected areas. In this view, dark green indicates healthy trees, while yellow and orange signal lower photosynthetic activity, revealing where the spongy moths have caused damage.

To quantify the extent of the impact, the Area in Range tool identifies pixels within a specific range of values. By hovering over the graph, 8.44 acres of the property appear to be most severely affected. This tool helps prioritize fieldwork by determining the areas most impacted by disease, weather, or fire.

Lens offers many powerful analysis tools to transform observations into action. Once observations have been made in Lens, they can be saved as Notes with images and locations—making it easy to pick up where you left off or share observations across your team. Users also have the ability to clip these pixels in range as polygons, save them for future observations, or export them into GIS for further analysis. The clipping tool is especially helpful for creating field maps.

Monitor invasive vegetation

It’s tricky to identify different plant species from space. But a telltale sign of invasive vegetation can be a growing season that extends earlier or later than native vegetation. After all, this is one of the ways that invasive plants gain a competitive advantage. While plants can’t be identified based solely on leaves, their abnormal growth patterns can be observed. The image below shows an example of how Lens can help spot invasive species like cheatgrass and show the progress made by treatment over the course of a few years.

Evaluate wildfire and burn impact remotely

As uncertainty and risk around wildfires increase with climate change, forest managers need new tools to rapidly assess the extent of wildfire impact to their land.
One effective approach for evaluating wildfire extent and severity is through the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR), or burn index, to illustrate the impacts of a fire, whether from a prescribed burn or a wildfire. The image below shows the Analysis tool in action while observing  a fire that has  affected a  region in South Africa. The Analysis tool provides easy-to-read charts that can be quickly shared with non-Lens users via a Share Link.

Lens 3D-mode can provide an even better view of fire damage as it captures both active burns and smoke. The Analyze Area in Range tool helps to determine the location and cumulative area with the highest burn intensity. This can be useful for determining field visit priorities and restoration plans.

Monitor for encroachment issues

Suburban parks are often surrounded by hundreds of private parcels. Lens can help you efficiently monitor property boundary encroachments before they become expensive issues. And with our parcel data overlay, you can easily check ownership records to send a letter or make a visit if needed.

Explore Lens for park managers

Lens provides unparalleled accessibility to remote sensing data that makes it easy for park districts of all sizes to understand the forests and lands they study, protect, and steward.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Lens can work for your monitoring needs, book a 30 minute demo with our team or sign up for Lens today.