WORKING TREES — LiDAR Research Scientist
📍 Remote (US-based); field travel required | 💼 Full-time | 💰 $80,000 base (~$112,000 w/ full benefits) | 📅 2-year term with opportunity to extend
Working Trees Description
Working Trees partners with ranchers to design and scale silvopasture systems - integrating trees into grazing lands to improve productivity, restore ecosystems, and generate new income from carbon.
With >2,000 hectares and >450,000 trees already planted, we’re proving that productive agriculture and nature restoration can go hand in hand.
Our mission is to unlock the next generation of ranching — where livestock producers and nature thrive together.
🌍 Real Impact – We build tools that measurably improve the planet and farmers’ lives.
🤝 Farmer First – Producers are our partners; their success is our success.
🧠 Scientific Rigor – Transparent, data-driven, verifiable.
⚡ Bias to Action – Climate won’t wait; we learn fast and move decisively.
🌱 Resourceful & Bold – Pragmatic builders with ambitious goals.
You’ll lead the collection and analysis of drone-based LiDAR and complementary ground-based data in order to calibrate allometric equations for key agroforestry species (planted in silvopasture and other agroforestry systems), working closely with the Chief Scientist and technical team.
In partnership with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Savanna Institute, the goal of this project is to reduce the uncertainty in the allometric equations used to estimate carbon in agroforestry trees — currently the largest source of error in agroforestry carbon accounting, and a significant bottleneck to agroforestry adoption.
The LiDAR research scientist is the primary technical engine behind the project, responsible for overseeing all aspects of the collection and processing of drone LiDAR point clouds from thousands of trees across the Savanna Institute's Midwest farm network (and other sites) to calibrate species-specific equations and determine best practices for tailoring calibrating allometric equations for agroforestry systems.