Forest & Photonics 2024

Keynote: Olli Leino

Regenerative forestry for more vibrant, diverse and climate-resilient forests - extending requirements for forest data

Olli Leino works as a digitalization director at Metsä Group’s Wood Supply and Forest Services. He has an extensive work experience in wood supply and business development. His expertise in digitalization and strategic development has significantly contributed to enhancing forest management practices and promoting sustainable forestry. Olli’s work focuses on leveraging modern data tools and integrated planning to achieve ambitious goals in business development and regenerative forestry.

Keynote: Jarkko Antila

Hyperspectral Satellite Imagery

Kuva Space Oy is revolutionizing Earth observation services by building the world’s most extensive hyperspectral satellite constellation and leveraging advanced AI to deliver near real-time value adding services.

Mauricio Acuna

Making forest operations more sustainable with Lidar sensors on harvesting equipment

Prof. Mauricio Acuna (Luke) holds a PhD in Forest Engineering from Oregon State University, a MSc in Operations Research and Management from the University of Chile, and a Bachelor in Forest Engineering from the University Austral of Chile. He is currently a Research Professor of AI and automation in forest operations at Luke. Prof. Acuna has nearly 30 years of professional experience and is one of the international and national research leaders in forest technology and wood supply chain optimization.

His international experience includes short-term visits and collaboration with organizations in Chile, Uruguay, Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. His research interests include sensing technology and AI in the forest supply chain, mathematical programming and optimization techniques in forest management and operations, wood and biomass harvesting and transport logistics, and harvesting machine evaluation.

Currently, he is leading projects focusing on Lidar and depth camera sensors installed on harvesting equipment combined with AI technology to improve decisions and maximize value recovery in forest operations.

Jari Vauhkonen

Benefits of models based on causal understanding vs. data-driven artificial intelligence for forest inventory and planning

Dr. Jari Vauhkonen is a professor of forest planning and an adjunct professor of forest remote sensing at the University of Eastern Finland. His research focus is on using artificial intelligence, machine learning and similar techniques on remote sensing and other digital map data to support multi-objective forest planning and decision analysis.

Markku Keinänen

Applications of proximal imaging spectroscopy in forestry and wood science

Dr. Markku Keinänen has currently a research manager position at the Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences and Center of Photonics Sciences at the UEF.  He is a plant biologist with background in ecophysiology, plant chemical analysis and phenotyping, and in recent years has been focusing particularly on spectral imaging of plants and bio-based materials, such as wood. He is the vice-head of the National Plant Phenotyping Infrastructure of Finland and has had the main responsibility of establishing two plant phenotyping laboratories focusing on spectral imaging, at the UEF and the UiT Arctic University of Norway at Tromsø

Tuomo Kauranne

How to gauge ecological sustainability of forest operations?

Dr. Tuomo Kauranne is the founder and CEO of Arbonaut Ltd., a leading provider of digital forest ecosystem inventory and forest decision support systems to governmental and private customers in over 40 countries on six continents.

Katsuhiko Takata

Automobile Made from Forests

Automobile Made from Forests, Katsuhiko Takata, Professor & Director, Institute of Wood Technology (IWT), Akita Prefectural University (APU)

Antti Kaartinen

How to make the most of digitalization in forest management - a global forest company perspective

Antti Kaartinen is Senior Manager in Stora Enso Forest Division. He has more than 20 years of working experience in forest sector, including forest remote sensing, GIS and some 15 years of global management consulting experience covering the forestry wood sourcing value chain. His current role covers product management and business intelligence in Precision Forestry domain; building improved forest data acquisition, handling and utilization.

John Alexander Pulgarin

Forest entomology: The European spruce bark beetle damage in Finland

Alexander is forest engineer and MSc in entomology, working as a researcher in forest insect pests and forest ecology.

At the moment, his main research focuses on assessing the risk of Ips typographus (European spruce bark beetle damage) damages in Finland.

Forest & Photonics Posters

Hanna Haapala, Petri Varvia, Lauri Korhonen (University of Eastern Finland), Estimation of tree cover extent using ICESat-2 spaceborne lidar data.

Ghasem Ronoud, Maryam Poorazimy, Tuomas Yrttimaa (University of Eastern Finland), Antero Kukko, Juha Hyyppä (Finnis Geospatial Research Institute), Ninni Saarinen (University of Eastern Finland), Ville Kankare (University of Turku), Mikko Vastaranta (University of Eastern Finland), Characterizing the Competitive Stress of Individual Trees Using Airborne Laser Scanning.

Mikko Vastaranta, Tuomas Yrttimaa, Lauri Liikonen, Aapo Erkkilä, Johanna Paakkari (University of Eastern Finland), Eetu Kotivuori (Finnish Forest Centre), Timo P. Pitkänen (Natural Resources Institute Finland), Alternative Methods for Collecting Forest Inventory Data from Field Plots: First Field Experiences.

Shammi Keya (Karelia University of Applied Sciences), Jouni Pykäläinen (University of Eastern Finland), Rohinton Emmanuel (Glasgow Caledonia University), Antti Haapala (University of Eastern Finland), Assessing Urban Greenness for Climate Resilience: A Spatial Framework for Evaluating Cooling Needs and Vulnerability in Cold Climate Cities.

Jan Kunnas, Aliisa Pöllänen (University of Eastern Finland), Bark Beetle in the National Landscapes of Koli and Puijo.

Tuomas Yrttimaa, Samuli Junttila (University of Eastern Finland), Juha Hyyppä (Finnish Geospatial Research Institute), Markus Holopainen (University of Helsinki), Michael A. Wulder (Natural Resources Canada), Mikko Vastaranta (University of Eastern Finland), Quantifying architectural uniqueness of Scots pine trees using terrestrial laser scanning: Towards individual tree fingerprinting.