Forest infrastructure specialists at Latvijas valsts meži (LVM) are increasingly using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, to carry out their daily tasks. The company uses more than 170 drones across various departments, valuing the benefits and support they provide in areas such as monitoring large nests, collecting forest inventory data, planning forestry work, and more. Last summer, drones also proved to be an invaluable tool for assessing damage caused by destructive storms.

When accepting forest road construction work, a forest infrastructure specialist can now use a drone to more quickly and conveniently check that the built forest infrastructure matches the construction project plans. Previously, the best tools for the job were a tape measure, a laser rangefinder, and a knowledge of geometry, such as bisectors and other mathematical principles.

“Thanks to drones, we can fly over newly built roads and photograph them even before officially accepting the construction work. The resulting photographs are then processed to create a single orthophoto map, which allows for measurements of road elements: radii of junction connections, culvert lengths, road width, and more. It also provides the opportunity to walk the road in a 3D model,” explains Jānis Buņķis, LVM’s Head of Forest Infrastructure Planning.

LVM now uses more than 170 drones in 8 different departments, starting with the Silviculture department, where the use of drones first began, and ending with the most recent adopters, the Forest Infrastructure and Real Estate Management departments.

Kārlis Linde, LVM’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Operation Manager, cites the main benefits of using drones as the ability to survey areas and make decisions about work execution remotely, without the employee needing to be on-site, as well as significant savings in both time and physical effort.