PA Early Stage Partners, the West Virginia Jobs Investment Trust Board, The Conservation Fund’s Natural Capital Investment Fund, and Innovation Valley Partners, a Battelle affiliate fund, also participated in the funding.

Morgantown, West Virginia-based ImageTree uses color infrared, hyperspectral imagery, and lidar, a laser-detection system similar to radar, along with global positioning systems and proprietary software to assess forestland.

Chief Executive Mark Redlus said the company’s techniques, employing sensors on satellites and planes, are far more accurate than traditional method—sending someone out in a pickup truck.

“It’s a 21st century asset class that’s been using a 20th century process,” he said.

Whereas the traditional method might measure about 1 percent of the trees in a forest and project those findings to the remaining 99 percent, ImageTree can sample 80 percent of the trees, Mr. Redlus said.

The company, which has raised $6.7 million in two equity rounds, plus $2 million in debt from a hedge fund, has applied for several patents on the software that stitches together the data from the sensors.

The company’s initial customers are real estate investment trusts, organizations that invest in various types of real estate, and timber investment management organizations, which typically manage money for wealthy individuals.

Aside from the U.S. forest management marketplace worth several hundred million dollars, the company is positioned to take a piece of the nascent carbon offset market, Mr. Redlus said.

The Chicago Climate Exchange has launched a market where owners of forestland could sell carbon credits to polluters.

“In the next 24 to 36 months there will be an incredible amount of movement in this marketplace,” he said.