[LINK] "A Bold Plan to Plant 1 Billion Trees a Year With Drones"

[rfmcdonald]

Discover's Carl Engelking writes about an innovative use for drone technology.

An engineering firm in the United Kingdom wants to change the world 1 billion trees at a time, and they’re relying on drones to do it.

The team at BioCarbon Engineering has developed an experimental system that uses drones to plant thousands of trees per day in deforested areas. The aerial technique is cheaper and faster than planting trees manually, and makes it possible for conservationists to counteract voracious industrial appetites for trees. BioCarbon is so confident in its drone tree planters, the company expects to plant 1 billion trees every year.

There are a variety of tree-planting techniques, but the two most popular are planting by hand and dispersing dry seeds from the air. Planting by hand yields good results but is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Spreading dry seeds en masse results in low uptake rates. BioCarbon’s drone planting strategy strikes a balance between these two methods.

The technique consists of two stages: reconnaissance, then planting. First, drones fitted with mapping technology fly over a selected area to construct 3-D maps of farmland and plantations in need of trees. Then, planting drones are sent out to conduct high-volume, precision seeding.

The tree-planting drones follow a pre-planned path and use pressurized air to fire germinated seedpods into the ground at specified locations from a height of about 6 to 9 feet. The pods are encapsulated in a nutrient-rich hydrogel, which provides food for the young trees. After planting, the same mapping drones can revisit reforested areas to assess their progress.