The Future of Sustainable Forestry Resides in Idaho – GreenBuildingAdvisor

By Justin R. Wolf | December 9, 2025

The University of Idaho’s Experimental Forest is an 8,200-acre classroom comprising a patchwork of dense forest situated about 15 miles northeast of Moscow. What makes this forest unique is that it’s the only one in the U.S. to be fully digitized using LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology, which allows the university to produce a detailed inventory of each tree, including its species, health, volume, height, and conditions of the surrounding forest floor and tree stand. Another thing that makes the Experimental Forest unique is that it’s the only working forest with management and production logging crews composed of students.

Taken together, those qualities make this pocket of the interior Northwest a critical proving ground for the future of sustainable forestry. Data can be collected and analyzed in a fraction of the time it takes forest managers to personally comb areas to conduct firsthand measurements, health assessments, and inventories. These data also inform how wildfires are forecasted and managed, as well as how logging operations and timber harvesting are responsibly carried out in one of the country’s most important timber basket regions. And crucially, emerging forestry professionals have direct access to next-generation digital mapping technology.

Fortunately for the rest of the region, U of I’s College of Natural Resources, which oversees the Experimental Forest, is keen on sharing its knowledge and resources. The university recently launched the Forest Innovations Institute (FII), an interdisciplinary research arm that promotes best management practices for public and private forestlands. The FII will also be in the fortuitous position to leverage the university’s remote sensing capabilities to advance research in areas including silviculture, tree physiology, fire modeling, sustainable harvesting, and forest management policy.

Operational research forest

Robert Keefe, an associate professor of forest operations and director of the Experimental…