We maintain a highly skilled staff that is dedicated to generating GIS maps, should the customers not have their own in-house capabilities.
All of our equipment is GPS-equipped which allows us to accurately determine the number of acres that need to be sprayed prior to treatment. GIS mapping enables us to fly the perimeter of a tract and create a GIS layer. The resulting digital file provides the acres to be applied and a lat/long-linked .shp file to be used by the pilot and ground crew for application guidance and print-mapping purposes.
During application, GPS guidance minimizes treatment skips and overlap. With the use of satellite technology, we are able to establish productivity lines, see what we are treating while we are treating it, and establish treatment lines for the remaining areas. That information is transmitted from the exterior GPS unit to a monitor in the corresponding aircraft or skidder. Our aerial and ground GPS units work hand-in-hand. If we begin treating a tract with a helicopter but discover that it would be most beneficial to treat a portion of it with the skidder, we are able to transfer the GPS data and pick up where we left off, without skips or overlaps. The data can also be transferred from skidder to aircraft, should portions of the terrain be better suited for helicopter application.
GPS also gives us the ability to generate an applied spray-area map for the landowner. We can then overlay the spray area on an aerial photograph for print-mapping or give it to forestors as a .shp file for GIS-system importation.
GIS and GPS capabilities give us an accurate acreage figure of land treated, decreases our application time and aircraft engine hours, and saves our customers money.