These Drones Will Plant 40,000 Trees in a Month. By 2028, They'll Have Planted 1 Billion (fastcompany.com) 50
Earlier this month, on land north of Toronto that previously burned in a wildfire, drones hovered over fields and fired seed pods into the ground, planting native pine and spruce trees to help restore habitat for birds. From a report: Flash Forest, the Canadian startup behind the project, plans to use its technology to plant 40,000 trees in the area this month. By the end of the year, as it expands to other regions, it will plant hundreds of thousands of trees. By 2028, the startup aims to have planted a full 1 billion trees. The company, like a handful of other startups that are also using tree-planting drones, believes that technology can help the world reach ambitious goals to restore forests to stem biodiversity loss and fight climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that it's necessary to plant 1 billion hectares of trees -- a forest roughly the size of the entire United States -- to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Existing forests need to be protected while new trees are planted; right now, that isn't working well. "There are a lot of different attempts to tackle reforestation," says Flash Forest cofounder and chief strategy officer Angelique Ahlstrom. "But despite all of them, they're still failing, with a net loss of 7 billion trees every year."
Drones don't address deforestation, which is arguably an even more critical issue than planting trees, since older trees can store much more carbon. But to restore forests that have already been lost, the drones can work more quickly and cheaply than humans planting with shovels. Flash Forest's tech can currently plant 10,000 to 20,000 seed pods a day; as the technology advances, a pair of pilots will be able to plant 100,000 trees in a day (by hand, someone might typically be able to plant around 1,500 trees in a day, Ahlstrom says.) The company aims to bring the cost down to 50 cents per tree, or around a fourth of the cost of some other tree restoration efforts. When it begins work at a site, the startup first sends mapping drones to survey the area, using software to identify the best places to plant based on the soil and existing plants. Next, a swarm of drones begins precisely dropping seed pods, packed in a proprietary mix that the company says encourages the seeds to germinate weeks before they otherwise would have. The seed pods are also designed to store moisture, so the seedlings can survive even with months of drought. In some areas, such as hilly terrain or in mangrove forests, the drones use a pneumatic firing device that shoots seed pods deeper into the soil.
Drones don't address deforestation, which is arguably an even more critical issue than planting trees, since older trees can store much more carbon. But to restore forests that have already been lost, the drones can work more quickly and cheaply than humans planting with shovels. Flash Forest's tech can currently plant 10,000 to 20,000 seed pods a day; as the technology advances, a pair of pilots will be able to plant 100,000 trees in a day (by hand, someone might typically be able to plant around 1,500 trees in a day, Ahlstrom says.) The company aims to bring the cost down to 50 cents per tree, or around a fourth of the cost of some other tree restoration efforts. When it begins work at a site, the startup first sends mapping drones to survey the area, using software to identify the best places to plant based on the soil and existing plants. Next, a swarm of drones begins precisely dropping seed pods, packed in a proprietary mix that the company says encourages the seeds to germinate weeks before they otherwise would have. The seed pods are also designed to store moisture, so the seedlings can survive even with months of drought. In some areas, such as hilly terrain or in mangrove forests, the drones use a pneumatic firing device that shoots seed pods deeper into the soil.
I guess that'll help (Score:2, Insightful)
Good thing the US has this initiative in the works [whitehouse.gov] as well. Too bad it only lasts until the end of calendar year 2020.
Re:I guess that'll help (Score:5, Informative)
At the same time he also opened up the Tongass forest (Alaska) to clear cutting.
Wait, what? (Score:2)
This should remain safe going forward too, as it was Obama/Biden who signed the US into the Paris Climate Accord and I honestly can't see Trump undoing this Executive Order. The sad part about this is that the taxpayer is now having to pay to clean up the mess of private enterprise, yet again. We are all paying for services we don't need nor use in many cases. My furniture is all decades old, was never purchased by me and it will pro
It's not about what stores the most carbon.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about what will in the future absorb most. Old growth trees host a very complex local ecosystem, which is what is good to protect, and keeping areas of that pristine is incredibly from a biodiversity perspective.
What is important to keep going is new growth trees. These are what actually absorb and sink the most carbon. If you build things out of wood, the carbon stays locked in that item. When you grow a new tree, that growth is all from absorbed carbon, which stays locked in, until you burn it.
By using drones and cutting the per tree planting costs, this allows for scalable and low cost implementation of tree planting as a carbon sink.. And the fact that it gives birds somewhere to call home just makes it a very happy ending to a tale (in the longer term). Anything that gives birds a good safe home gets my approval! :)
Re: (Score:2)
I think California [ca.gov] is going to need something like this as well. 4E6 acres burned and climbing.
Re: (Score:1)
I think California is going to need something like this as well. 4E6 acres burned and climbing.
I recall hearing people that know something on the subject mentioning that forest fires are part of the natural process in forest growth. Some tree species will not spread their seeds until a fire forces them to open the seed pods. Fires clear out old and dead trees for new trees to replace them. Fires burn away brush, leaves, and grasses that shade trees so that the young trees can get more sunlight.
In other words, this is not where we should focus our efforts, those areas will see the trees come back n
Re: (Score:2)
" Fires burn away brush, leaves, and grasses ..."
So no raking needed.
Re: (Score:3)
But also part of what's going on here is global warming. High desert will encroach on what was formerly alpine forest and trees there won't be coming back.
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe we should not "fix" something stupid and evil with something stupid too. (See my comment below [slashdot.org] for why it's actually stupid.)
Maybe we should not throw our thrash out into the air in the first place, and collect it right at the source.
Hell, maybe we should not *make* thrash in the first place. What are we? Pigs?
(Definitely not. Pigs are actually quite cleanly in nature. The mud bath is for cleaning their skin.)
Re: (Score:2)
Pigs are actually quite cleanly in nature. The mud bath is for cleaning their skin.
The 'mud' in a pig wallow contains their shit. Tell us again about how clean pigs are.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
What is important to keep going is new growth trees. These are what actually absorb and sink the most carbon.
It varies by species.
https://www.pacificforest.org/... [pacificforest.org]
https://news.mongabay.com/2019... [mongabay.com]
https://www.wired.com/story/tr... [wired.com]
All growth in trees occurs in the cambium, a thin layer below the bark. It is powered by photosynthesis, which as we all know requires water, sunlight, leaf area, appropriate range of temperature, etc. The larger tree has more leaf area, and a larger cambium. In species which continue to grow in old age, carbon sequestration increases.
You can't have old trees without new trees, but old tre
Re:It's not about what stores the most carbon.. (Score:4)
Shoot the tree-huggers, too. (Score:1)
They're why there was no forest management in Oregon for the last 30 years, causing the devastating fires that they're trying to blame on global warming.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20... [wattsupwiththat.com]
Re: Shoot the tree-huggers, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely Correct !
Used to be that controlled burns were considered essential .
Nobody to blame here but stupid activists who don't have the facts, but have plenty of opinions.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
"National Forests cover about 16 million acres (about 25%) of Oregon."
https://oregonwild.org/forests... [oregonwild.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody to blame here but stupid activists who don't have the facts, but have plenty of opinions.
Some of the first laws in California prohibited controlled burns... by natives, who maintained this land for literally about ten thousand years. Those laws weren't created by "activists", or "hippies", or whatever you imagine. They were created by property owners, who had built homes in places where they would be wiped out if the natives did what they had been doing to manage the forests for millennia.
But hey, opinions over facts, right? Wait, what?
A lot of trees do not make a forest, ... actually. (Score:5, Interesting)
This tree planting is actually much dumber and misguided than it sounds, no matter how well-intentioned.
A forest is a complex ecosystem of trees, bacteria, fungi, small plants and animals, and climate. Everything in symbiosis. You cannot just create that from nothing by planting trees. They take a century, if not more, to turn into an actual such ecosystem. At least until the first trees naturally die of old age and are naturally replaced.
Because: Look around on the ground around trees. You will find a dozen saplings for *every* square meter (9 sq. ft) *each year*.
It's not like the forest was incapable of spreading before we grand hairless apes existed to plant it. . . .
What actually needs to happen, is to leave it the fuck alone. Not cut it down anymore. Not destroy things.
It will naturally grow back. And it will take just as long, to return to normality, whether we plant trees or not. I'm sorry.
Oh, and in that wake: Beekeepers' bees supplant wild bees. Because they compete for food. So beekeepers are very far from the saviors of bees they present themselves at. Better solution below the line.
- - - -
Build a wild bee "hotel". Reet, 6 inches long, cut with a cutting disk, against a closed back side, is best. Tree trunks, drilled from the *side*, filed to remove pointy bits, is nice too. And finally, lots of soft but non-collapsing sand walls for digging are preferred by 70% of wild bees. Make sure to add some chicken fence about 2 bird beaks/legs from all holes, to prevent birds from snacking on them too early. But add a few holes that are twice a big as the biggest bee you want there, as standard chicken fence hole size is extremely annoying to them for getting through, and they will buzz in front of it forever, unable to get in without flipping on a wire and falling out again. They need to be able to *fly* in, with space to space. I recommend a simple roof too.
And don't forget to have some wild meadow in front of it. There are ready-made mixes of seeds available. Pick one with species native to your local area. (Ideally, not more than 100 miles away.)
Re:A lot of trees do not make a forest, ... actual (Score:4, Informative)
But:
Sassan Saatchi, a senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, believes it has some merit. But while he says there’s potential for using reforestation as a climate mitigation tool, he cautions there are many factors to consider and that planting trees will never be a substitute for decreasing fossil fuel emissions.
tldr: It's worth doing, but only in conjunction with other, less tantalizing, human sacrifices that the clever hairless apes have thus far shown little appetite for.
Re:A lot of trees do not make a forest, ... actual (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if left it alone, it probably wouldn't take a century. Mt Saint Helens demonstrated that a devastated ecosystem can rebound almost completely in twenty to thirty years. After the massive 1988 Yellowstone fires, most of the burned area grew back in thirty years, through a variety of ecological stages. It's not like we don't have plenty of examples of how you don't need to actively "manage" regrowth.
Granted, you won't replace centuries-old trees, but a young ecosystem can still be a "viable" ecosystem.
We planted 10 million tree at St Helens (Score:2)
> Even if left it alone, it probably wouldn't take a century. Mt Saint Helens demonstrated that a devastated ecosystem can rebound almost completely in twenty to thirty years.
We planted 10 million trees at Mount Saint Helens.
So that success is an example of the success of a planting effort.
> After the massive 1988 Yellowstone fires, most of the burned area grew back in thirty years, through a variety of ecological stages.
At Yellowstone, one of the crews was doing 13,000 trees / day.
I don't know the to
Re: (Score:2)
A forest is a complex ecosystem of trees, bacteria, fungi, small plants and animals, and climate. Everything in symbiosis. You cannot just create that from nothing by planting trees. They take a century, if not more, to turn into an actual such ecosystem. At least until the first trees naturally die of old age and are naturally replaced.
I doubt that's the case most of the time. The forests found in much of the Appalachians are all newer growth forests which have come up since the establishment of National Parks and forests less than a century ago. Trees fall and die long before they hit 100 years old. Additionally, the area around Mount St. Helens has recovered considerably considering it was wiped out because of the 1980 eruption.
Re: (Score:2)
There actually is something humans can do to help preserve the land — preserve the soil. Projects to reduce erosion through engineered drainage (which can be as simple as a ditch) or to collect water (again, a ditch... see Swale [wikipedia.org]) can make a huge difference in outcome. Forests will often regrow in successions and of their own accord if the soil doesn't wash away in the meantime.
Way to bury the lede (Score:2)
But to restore forests that have already been lost, the drones can work more quickly and cheaply than humans planting with shovels. Flash Forest's tech can currently plant 10,000 to 20,000 seed pods a day; as the technology advances, a pair of pilots will be able to plant 100,000 trees in a day (by hand, someone might typically be able to plant around 1,500 trees in a day, Ahlstrom says.)
...
In some areas, such as hilly terrain or in mangrove forests, the drones use a pneumatic firing device that shoots seed pods deeper into the soil.
You kidding me? Give a bunch of kids each a cart and a pneumatic seed gun, tell them to go Anton Chigurh on the ground to save the planet from global warming, and you'll have people lined up to skip school to plant trees for days at a time.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, one person can plant about 1000 tree seedlings a day by hand.
What's the survival rate for hand-planted seedling? I imagine it's better than for seeds in pellets. While this is a commendable effort, they aren't really planting 40,000 trees or seedlings per month. They're planting 40,000 seeds per month. The article mentioned "high rates of survival in controlled studies," but there seem to be no results yet about survival rates.
Now, if the drones could plant seedlings, that would be pretty amazing, both from a technology design perspective, but also from a tree su
Re: (Score:2)
I asked google and the top two results suggested 30-50%, but that was just a quick whiff without context (albeit from sciency sources)
Re: (Score:2)
I did that as a kid, replanting a burned out forested area not far from my home in Gloucester VA. The VA Forestry Service provided the pine seedlings (thousands of them), I had a flat spade instead of a "dibble", but it went well enough. Nice neat rows in between the surviving big trees: tedious work, and I was glad when that summer project was over. I went back decades later (50 years?) and got a good deal of satisfaction viewing the forest I'd created. The area is a bit built up, so some of them were
Squirrels are better. (Score:3)
With nothing to prey on the deer, there are tree lines everywhere about deer height. Nothing new lasts long until you fix the underlying problem.
Re: (Score:1)
Bears, that'll fix the deer problem.
But when you reintroduce bears into an area, humans complain about their relatives being eaten.
Re:Squirrels are better. (Score:4)
Now how to solve the deer eating the saplings... that is the true problem
In much of the USA this problem is solved by something we call "deer season".
This is when the state department of wildlife takes a count of the deer in various regions of the state, compute how many deer are in an area, how many excess there are to have a healthy population, and then issue taking permits to hunters. The season is usually split into parts to maximize income from the permits and to assure not too many or too few deer are taken. The first part of the season is for "primitive weapons" or some other name for people that hunt with bows, muskets, or what not. This means the most deer for the people most handicapped in their hunting. Then comes "slug hunting", where people are allowed to use shotgun slugs, and perhaps handguns or other weapons with similar range limitations. This is when most every yahoo with a 12 gauge they got from Walmart get a deer. Then comes the "rifle hunting", when numbers should be about where the wildlife managers want it to be. The few excess deer left from the earlier parts of the season are for people with high powered rifles to pick off from 300 yards. By this time the deer will be quite spooked from the hunting before and won't go near any human. This might not seem very sporting but it's how people can get some tasty meat and the deer numbers are brought to a healthy population.
This happens every year from October to December or early January. It appears to work well on managing the numbers of deer.
I guess that's...good? (Score:3)
If we won't actively save our planet, hey at least we can build robots that will!
To get out of a hole first stop digging (Score:4, Insightful)
Planting trees is a great idea. Having a plan to manage them long term, with plans for harvesting the trees for lumber, is better. What we need more than anything is a plan to lower CO2 emissions in a way that is affordable, safe, plentiful, and has minimal impact on the environment. That means onshore wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear fission.
What will also help, and I'm sure will be controversial, is cleaning up these natural oil spills called tar sands so there is more land to plant these trees. Tar sands are just a big sticky mess that leaves land barren. In time it will break down to where plants can grow but we can speed this process along. We can harvest this tar for use as raw material for lubricants, fertilizers, plastics, medical and industrial feedstock, and even as fuel for heating and transportation. Once the tar is cleaned from the sand then the land can be landscaped to optimize for wildlife to occupy, and seeded with trees, grasses, and other plant life to be a carbon sink.
This does mean digging up petroleum so that we can lower the CO2 in the air. Not just any petroleum, the kind close the surface where it is preventing plants from growing on the land. Canada has a lot of land like this, and a Canadian company building drones to plant trees could see this as an opportunity to get more land to plant trees.
Re: (Score:2)
Using the tar sands dooms the world; it can not be used as it stores many times the CO2 required to destroy life as we know it! Seriously, we have to curb our use.
Tar sands requires a great deal of energy to process... from 5:1 to 3:1 raw energy output to input; it's even worse as far as the whole process. Add environmental restoration (drone or not,) remove gov subsidies, lower pollution (to other industry levels,) that ratio becomes much worse and probably less than the pathetic subsidized 1.2:1 corn eth
Seed the world! (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
As a fast grower, hemp is a good CO2 sequesterer. But it's also a heavy feeder, so you have to grow it in succession to avoid destroying soil, and big ag hates to do that. They prefer the predictable cycles of growing in dirt, and fertilizing with oil.
If you seeded the world with weed, what you'd end up with is a whole bunch of seeds. Yuck.
Really needed? (Score:2)
We need is blue green algae, not trees (Score:3)
Trees are the Polar Bears of plants - they are large and pretty, get all the press, but are more of a sign of good environmental management than a cause of it.
Yes, more trees will create a better environment for other life, but trees are not as big a C02 fighter as people think they are. They do sequester some carbon, but honestly that is not that significant unless you cut down the tree and maker long lasting permanent furniture from it. Otherwise, over the long term, rot/forest fires release most of the carbon you sequester via a tree. Often in less than a 100 years. Trees borrow the carbon.
Blue Green Algae on the other hand, absorbs far more C02, produces the majority of 02, and is quicker to be eaten by fish and the carbon mostly ends up falling to the bottom of the ocean, where it is sequestered away from the atmosphere.
(Also, can I borrow one of these drones to plant 10,000 seeds in a day in 'my' neighborhood? I promise it won't be either Manchinel trees or Cannabis. Oh, the possibilities...)
Re: (Score:2)
If our goal is to capture CO2 immediately with plants then algae aside (with which we should be making carbon-negative biofuels) we should be planting bamboo. Some varieties grow in extremely poor soils, and they grow very quickly meaning they sequester lots of carbon quickly. Once charred, bamboo holds up to burial, so it can be used in contexts similar to treated lumber. We could be using it to build fences, small structures, small bridges, etc. Unlike wood you don't have to mill and plane it to make it u
But (Score:2)
No, this is not planting trees. (Score:2)
Seed pods? (Score:2)
Hmm - "dropping seed pods, packed in a proprietary mix" ... actually, that's pretty much what birds do.
Eat fruit of plant, pass it through the digestive system, and it pops out the end, surrounded by a white biological fertiliser, ready to sprout.
And they can fly, too!
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm - "dropping seed pods, packed in a proprietary mix" ... actually, that's pretty much what birds do.
Eat fruit of plant, pass it through the digestive system, and it pops out the end, surrounded by a white biological fertiliser, ready to sprout.
Cattle, horses, and other large grazing animals can eat corn, some of that corn passes through the digestive tract, and finds itself planted on the ground surrounded by a small mound of natural fertilizer. Compared to modern farming techniques though it's a very slow and random process with a high failure rate. By planting corn in an optimal spacing, getting fertilizer metered precisely, the land cleared of plant and animal life that threatens the corn, there's a near 100% chance of the seed reaching to a
Nature knows how to handle wildfires (Score:1)
Wildfires are natural events; there are plants and trees evolved to exploit the clearings they produce. Spraying fir trees will just disrupt that. It's like introducing rabbits to Australia; seems like a good idea, but probably isn't.
Carbon Capture that works (Score:3)
This is a great example of using nature to solve the CO2 problem. I am heartened that they are making the right moves to avoid monoculture and increase biodiversity.
Perhaps some question about the Drones maybe whats the impact of using them at scale ?
We can all start to allow nature to do this by itself.
Rewilding is practically free, it attracts animals which would through their activity and excretions help to allow local trees and vegetation to expand into the area.
I have rewilded parts of my garden which has led to a massive uptick in the kinds of animals and insects i see in my garden, and the pesky squirrels keep planting walnut trees - which kind of prooves my point !
99.93% to go! (Score:1)