Passion Forest

CR Godefroy Grassin en Nouvelle Zélande © Forêt Patrimoine

New-Zealand

- End-of-studies trip for a forestry engineering apprentice

Three Weeks in April

As part of his forestry engineering apprenticeship at AgroParis-Tech and his final thesis titled « Development of a Forest Estimation Protocol Based on Geomatics », Godefroy Grassin traveled to New Zealand to conduct an exploratory study on forestry practices and geomatics analysis tools used in this avant-garde country.

The objectives of the mission were:
- to analyze the forest management models applied in the large New Zealand forest masses
- to study the organization and functioning of the forest market and forest real estate transactions
- to observe the operational uses of remote sensing tools (satellite imagery, drones, LiDAR) in forest management and inventory
- to gather comparative elements with practices observed in France and in studies conducted in Canada as part of the thesis.

The mission aimed to enrich applied research work while contributing to the strategic monitoring carried out by Forêt Patrimoine on the evolution of international forest markets and forest estate assessment tools.
Discovering the New Zealand forest context, which is diametrically opposed to ours historically, geographically, and culturally, is fascinating. Highly advanced in remote sensing and satellite imagery, New Zealanders precisely monitor the evolution of forests and detect real-time changes related to climate change.

In these antipodes, we see emerging strategies for diversifying species, aiming for 30% of the surfaces to be species other than radiata pine beginning to take shape.
The management of prolific wildlife in this island territory becomes a central topic in the protection of forest stands.