The New Jersey Forest Service is currently managing three contractors using various types of forestry equipment at Double Trouble State Park and Bass River State Forest. To support oversight and ensure alignment with project goals, a drone will be used to monitor progress and conduct inspections. Several field foresters are licensed drone pilots, enabling rapid-response flights based on real-time field observations rather than pre-scheduled missions. These flights may be used to map insect or pathogen outbreaks, assess the extent of active forest management operations while contractors are on-site, or identify alternative access routes during inventory work. The drone will also support quality control and inventory assessments in Wharton State Forest, Stokes State Forest, and Jennings Creek, enhancing data accuracy and operational efficiency across multiple project areas.

This project will produce high-resolution aerial imagery and video for monitoring contractor operations, rapid-response reconnaissance reports based on field forester observations, and GIS-compatible maps for outbreak tracking, access planning, and inventory support. Additional outputs include quality control data for forest inventory and management operations.