Drones in Forestry: TreeSwift Raises $4.8 M

TreeSwift Raises $4.8M for Drone-Based Forest Monitoring System

by DRONELIFE Staff Writer Ian M. Crosby

Philadelphia-based company Treeswift announced the acquisition of $4.8 million in Seed funding. The funding was led by Pathbreaker Ventures, with contributions by Crosslink Capital, TenOneTen Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, Boom Capital Ventures, Yes VC, Susa Ventures, Draft Ventures, Anorak Ventures, S7 Ventures, Awesome People Ventures, Switch Ventures, Convective Capital, and Dorm Room Fund. This brings the total Treeswift has raised to $6.4 million in order to provide forest stakeholders with easily-accessible precision data and analyses.

SwiftCruise by Treeswift is a drone-based solution that maneuvers beneath the forest canopy to rapidly gather detailed data within heavily forested areas, obtaining measurements of individual trees through a combination of cameras, sensors, and advanced machine learning algorithms.

Treeswift provides stakeholders in natural resource management with software and data services that are utilized in carbon capture estimation, timber value appraisal, fire mitigation, biomass understory, deforestation monitoring, advanced growth forecasting, and overall forest management.

“Treeswift’s solution is able to measure the natural world in a way never before possible,” said Ryan Gembala, Founder and Managing Partner of Pathbreaker Ventures. “The implications for commercial forestry, carbon capture, and more are profound. I expect the data from their deployments to become a foundation for the biggest opportunities in nature-based solutions and management over the upcoming decades.”

“Our mission is to build the data ecosystem for the natural world, and we are accomplishing that by capturing important data from below the forest canopy,” said Treeswift CEO Steven Chen. “We anticipate that Treeswift technology will help to obtain a more transparent, verifiable, and accurate view of the planet from the ground up.”

Drones in Forestry: a Better Solution

Previous methods of capturing forest data, done by satellite or plane, were capable of measuring only the tops of forests, but little to nothing beneath. Treeswift has found that what gets the best forest data for their customers isn’t the specific hardware or sensors, but the algorithms that guide the product under the forest canopy. Additionally, SwiftCruise is able to collect the required data 10x faster than through existing approaches.

Treeswift’s drones in forestry solution is being deployed by companies including Molpus Woodlands Group, Superior Pine Products Company, and Weyerhaeuser Company.

“The Molpus team has been particularly impressed with Treeswift’s ability to accurately allocate trees into product classes and to identify stem quality issues impacting value,” said Randy Taylor, Senior Director, Resource Planning of Molpus Woodlands Group. “Understanding and accurately maintaining timber inventories play an important part in managing our clients’ forests to their potential.”

“Treeswift is helping us to manage our business smarter and more strategically,” said Scott Griffin, President and CEO of Superior Pine Products Company. “Not only have I been impressed with how much faster and more accurate it is to collect data from our forests, I’m equally impressed with the professionalism and know-how of the Treeswift management team.”

“Forest inventory collection is an enormous part of our business so we are always looking for ways to improve,” added Corey Davis, Vice President, Superior Pine Products Company. “Treeswift helps our timber cruisers collect more actionable data than ever before and we can do so with fewer boots on the ground.”

Read more about drones in forestry and agriculture:

• UK University Invests in Drones and LiDAR for Forestry Research
• Johnny Appleseed takes Flight: Drones Aid in Battling Deforestation One Flight at a Time
• Drones in Agriculture Worth More than $5 Billion by 2025
• Taking Drones in Agriculture to the Next Level: the SmartFruit Project

 

Ian attended Dominican University of California, where he received a BA in English in 2019. With a lifelong passion for writing and storytelling and a keen interest in technology, he is now contributing to DroneLife as a staff writer.