It’s about the forest view from above.
School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences Associate Professor Carlos Alberto Silva’s SilvaLab, SFFGS and the University of Florida landed a major forestry tech conference and it’s set to kick off May 4 here in Gainesville.
“ForestSAT is the premier international forum for researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders advancing forest observation and analysis through cutting-edge technologies,” said Maureen Duane, a conference co-chairwoman and part of the SilvaLab. “Since its inception in 2002, ForestSAT has convened every two to three years.”
Conference organizers received 480 abstracts from prospective conference attendees in 49 countries, more than 400 of which are in-person.
The organization behind the conference is the Association for Forest Spatial Analysis Technologies, hence the SAT in ForestSAT.
“At its core, ForestSAT is about how we observe and understand Earth’s forests at scale, from carbon storage and wildfire risk to biodiversity and climate impacts,” Silva said. “These are not abstract academic topics — they directly connect to issues like climate change, hurricane recovery, wildfire management, and sustainable land use.
“The conference brings together the people building the satellite systems, AI tools, and models that governments and industries actually use to make decisions about forests worldwide. That’s why it carries weight beyond academia.”
ForestSAT 2026 is the third conference held at a U.S. university. The University of Maryland hosted the 2018 event, while Oregon State hosted in 2012. The work done at SFFGS and the SilvaLab helped attract the association here.
SFFGS “boasts a vibrant younger generation of scientists and graduate students contributing to global efforts in characterizing forest ecosystems using state-of-the-art remote sensing technologies,” according to the SilvaLab proposal to ForestSAT. “Notably, scientists at SFFGS/UF have engaged as science team members of NASA missions and programs, such as ICESat-2 and the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS).
“Furthermore, UF has pioneered open-source tools for remote sensing data processing in forestry, particularly LiDAR, with more than 100 thousand downloads worldwide. Tools such as rGEDI, rLiDAR, ForestGapR, and others have not only facilitated cutting-edge research within the university but have also been employed by a vast global community of students, stakeholders, and researchers.”
There are 76 workshops scheduled on various expert-led presentations over the course of the week. Some of the topics addressed include the use of AI in forest monitoring — looking at rapid advances in machine learning changing how we detect change, predict risk, and process massive satellite datasets — and moving from annual assessments to near real-time forest monitoring, along with wildfire disturbance and recovery dynamics.
Other topics include spaceborne missions using new satellite systems to change how people measure forest structure and biomass, along with new ways to estimate carbon and biomass for determining climate policy, carbon markets and emissions accountability.
The conference “sits at the convergence of ‘seeing forests,’ ‘understanding forests,’ and ‘deciding with forests data,’” Silva said. “That’s what makes the conference more than just an academic meeting — it’s increasingly part of how global environmental decisions are made.”
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