Imagine you’re a landowner with dozens or hundreds of mature hardwood trees — not a stretch, since the majority of forestland in the U.S. is privately owned. If you want to know the trees’ value, you’ll need to hire a professional forester. What if, before you start working with the forester, you could gain preliminary information about the trees’ value and other features with your phone? That’s the hope behind iForester, an app developed by Purdue University’s Song Zhang, a professor of mechanical engineering, and Cheryl Qian, a professor of industrial design, in collaboration with Songlin Fei, director of the Institute for Digital Forestry. The idea for the app was born over dinner at a colleague’s house about three years ago. The two began to discuss the digital divide in forestry — the way some members of society, especially rural residents, don’t have equal access to new technology.