🌳 Forests, Space Lasers and Timber Wins: Explore Innovation in Forestry

Jens Isbak

Welcome to this week's newsletter 👋🏻

From handcrafted wooden bikes to space lasers and seedling-sorting robots, this week’s newsletter is packed with stories at the intersection of nature and next-gen tech.

💬 In this issue:

Foresting Tomorrow #27: Woody bikes, NASA lasers and AI-grown trees 📰
Feature story: NASA’s space lasers reveal tropical forest resilience 🛰️
Success story: Timber beats concrete—even with forest slash 💪
Product update: Clarity for creative map registrations 🖨️
Further reading: Sources and tools 🤓

Let’s dive in! 👇
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🎙️ Podcast episode 27: Woody bikes, NASA lasers and AI-grown trees

In this week’s episode, we cover three stories that each reveal a different way technology is transforming forests:

A handcrafted bike made from nine tree species across five continents—and how it compares to carbon racing frames
NASA’s LiDAR sensors on the International Space Station mapping tropical forest health in real time
How Finnish robotics are now automating seedling propagation in New Zealand using AI and machine vision
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And along the way, we ask:

How can satellite data improve forest monitoring?
Can mass cloning of elite trees threaten biodiversity?
Should robots handle the future of forest restoration?

🌳 Listen to the latest episode of Foresting Tomorrow here 🌳
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‍‍🛰️ Feature story: NASA’s space lasers reveal tropical forest resilience

NASA’s GEDI mission (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation) is using space-based LiDAR to map tropical canopy heights with never-before-seen precision.
Why it matters:

Canopy height is a powerful indicator of carbon storage, forest health, and microclimate stability
Southern Amazon forests are showing signs of stress from prolonged dry seasons
Climate, topography, and soil explain 75% of height variation—giving new clarity to forest risk assessments

With better data from orbit, we can better protect what’s under the canopy.

📄 Read the full article here
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💨 Success story: Timber beats concrete—even with forest slash

Even when you account for branches, bark and other logging “leftovers” (aka slash), timber still comes out ahead.

A new study by architectural firm Corgan introduces a mass timber carbon calculator that models:

Slash management scenarios like composting, pile burning, and mastication
Full carbon accounting from forest to construction site
Case study: A 6-storey timber office building emits less carbon than a comparable steel and concrete structure—even in the worst-case scenario

This tool helps make the climate case for timber even more robust—and real.

📘 Download the white paper here
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