Vibrant Planet’s new cloud-based system “Land Tender” will help land managers evaluate forest health projects in months instead of years
As the 220,000-acre Caldor Fire still burns, we are excited to announce a grant from our Smartest Forest Fund to a first-of-its-kind digital tool, called Land Tender, that will provide land managers in the Tahoe Basin with the high-resolution data and modeling they need to make more agile and informed decisions. Land Tender has the potential to cut the time it takes to plan and execute projects that protect communities and forests from years to months.
Land Tender is being developed for the Tahoe Basin in collaboration with the California Tahoe Conservancy, Basin land managers, fire districts, scientists, local NGOs and other stakeholders to update Lake Tahoe’s community wildfire protection and forest health plan for the entirety of the lake’s 500-square-mile watershed basin. This work will include thinning hazardous and overgrown timber, clearing fuels from roadsides, and conducting prescribed burns.
“The Caldor Fire made it into the Lake Tahoe Basin, and we narrowly averted catastrophe in part because of proactive fire prevention and forest health projects,” said Tahoe Fund CEO Amy Berry. “Land Tender is a unique tool that can help communities like ours dramatically speed up the timeline of critical forest management projects—some of which have previously taken up to 10 years to plan and execute. This is exactly the type of project we started our ‘Smartest Forest Fund’ to help accomplish.”
“We are facing concurrent climate, wildfire, biodiversity, water and health crises that cross jurisdictions and affect each and every one of us. Our future depends on how quickly we adapt, cooperate and take action. With Land Tender, we can harness the best science, technology and data to protect and restore forests. We can mitigate risk, quickly and at scale,” said Allison Wolff, CEO of Vibrant Planet, the creator of Land Tender.
With Land Tender, parties across jurisdictions can collaborate and rapidly assess landscapes and communities to make informed, ready-to-implement decisions in near real-time. This planning is done utilizing LiDAR technology coupled with best-in-class infrastructure data. Remote sensing, machine learning and artificial intelligence also enable land managers to continuously monitor project progress, and then shift priorities and resources based on evolving conditions and threats.
Land Tender was designed with significant input from land managers, emergency responders, scientists, NGOs, and local and regional policy and decision makers. It was built by a team of seasoned technology, ecology and forest management leaders with decades of collective experience at the U.S. Forest Service, Lyft, Netflix, Guidewire, Facebook, and Omidyar Network.
About Vibrant Planet
Land Tender is the first product launched by Vibrant Planet, a public benefit corporation and a 501(c)(3) Data Commons focused on adaptive planning and market-based solutions for restoring the biosphere and the climate, with $8 million in initial venture capital and philanthropic support. Vibrant Planet is backed by a broad group of investors and philanthropists including Facebook’s chief product officer; Netflix’s former chief product officer; Earthshot, an early-stage venture firm focused on climate solutions; The Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust; Halogen Ventures; and several private family foundations. Founder Allison Wolff was an early leader at Netflix and strategic advisor to eBay, Google, Facebook, Drawdown, Conservation International, GlobalGiving and other organizations on vision, strategy, culture change and user experience design over the past two decades.
