INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS • February 8, 2025
In the remote northern half of Maine, forests dominate the landscape. While few people live in what’s known as “unorganized territory,” timber companies control vast swaths of land there and frequently harvest trees for housing, furniture, paper and more. But technology is revealing hidden gems in this part of the state. Dr. John Hagan, president of the nonprofit Our Climate Common, has recently begun using light detection and ranging, or LiDAR, to find patches of biodiverse old-growth forest. He said, “If you shoot LiDAR at the forest from an airplane, it gives you a three-dimensional signature of the forest. And it turns out, that can tell us exactly where the old forest is. About 4 percent of that 10 million acres is old-growth forest. So not very much percentage wise, but that’s about 400,000 acres that you didn’t know you had, and you don’t want to lose.”