Forest health teams use QField to record and monitor tree condition:

• Pest and disease observations with species, symptom, and severity
• Defoliation, dieback, and crown condition assessment
• Tree mortality and deadwood recording
• Affected-stand delineation as polygons
• Photo documentation against individual trees and stands
• Repeat monitoring at fixed locations to track change over time

Built for repeat monitoring

Forest health is a question of change over time. A single survey tells you what a stand looks like today, but the value comes from coming back and seeing what has shifted. QField stores each observation as a structured record with its location, attributes, photos, and capture time. On the next visit, the previous records load straight onto the device, and the live GPS position guides crews back to the same trees and stands. The result is a consistent time series rather than a pile of one-off surveys.

One workflow with QGIS and QFieldCloud

Set up the health-survey project in QGIS once, push it to every device through QFieldCloud , and run conflict-safe sync at the end of each day. Crews work offline for as long as the survey takes, then sync when they next come into office connectivity.

Forestry teams using QField

• Young farmers reduce deforestation by 71% in Ghana , where community-based monitoring teams use QField in the Tano Offin Forest Reserve
• Browse all forestry success stories →

Looking for the broader picture? See QField for forestry and silviculture → .

QField is used across the full span of forestry fieldwork:

• Forest inventory and plot sampling , with structured tree-level forms and plot geometry
• Silviculture and harvesting operations tracking , from planting blocks to post-harvest verification
• Forest habitat and biodiversity mapping , under dense canopy and in remote terrain
• Forest health monitoring , tracking pests, disease, and tree condition over time
• Forest road and infrastructure inventory
• Riparian buffer monitoring and compliance documentation

Working under canopy

Forest fieldwork sits in the hardest conditions for mobile mapping. Mobile data is unreliable. GPS multipath under dense canopy degrades positioning. Crews spend days at a time out of office contact, often in environments where a paper notebook still feels like the safer bet.

QField is built for those conditions. Basemaps and layers are packaged onto the device before the crew leaves the office, so nothing depends on a network connection. Forms can be tuned to forestry data with value-relation widgets for species codes, numeric constraints for DBH and height, and required-photo rules at any decision point. For survey-grade positioning, external GNSS receivers connect over Bluetooth with live accuracy visible during capture.

One workflow with QGIS and QFieldCloud

Forestry teams prepare the project in QGIS once, push it to every device through QFieldCloud , and run conflict-safe sync at the end of each day. The same QGIS project that an inventory crew uses in the field is the one the office uses to plan next year’s operations.

See QField in real forestry projects

Look at how QField is being used by forestry and forest-conservation programmes around the world:

• Young farmers reduce deforestation by 71% in Ghana , through community-led monitoring in the Tano Offin Forest Reserve
• Community-led mapping for land rights and forest protection in Sarawak , with the Bruno Manser Fonds
• Building on top of QFieldCloud , in Italian green infrastructure inventory
• Browse all forestry success stories →