DroneSeed – Re-planting the future with drones | Hacker News Reader

DroneSeed – Re-planting the future with drones

droneseed.co

42 pointszatkin8 comments

Scattering seeds definitely has a high cost. Just scattering from 1000 feet and hoping for the best has been reviewed again and again since the 70's. Its too expensive due to losses from seeds that landed on rocks and in creeks.

Where this technology advances is in using drones to fly to pre-selected coordinates where seeds will survive and fire a seed into the ground (such as next to a stump). Called micro-sites, the combination of drones and new lightweight sensors have made this possible only in the last few years.

While we love tree planters working with shovels, we see huge potential in lowering the cost of replanting trees with technology. Imported work gangs with shovels dont do a lot to reduce labor costs. This has big impacts for replanting and reducing the carbon load thats been put in the atmosphere already.

Im happy to answer questions and will check back here or email us on our site. We're always looking for developers and people interested in the data science that micro-siting requires.

Grant, CEO DroneSeed

I can certainly see an advantage of creating more aesthetically pleasing landscape than the regimented rows that are the norm for most tree planting efforts.

Are there arrangements or patterns of trees that are effective against environmental factors such as desertification that would be time consuming for people on the ground to create but "effortless" for drones?

Is droneseed related to BiocarbonEngineering? Looks like the same premise, technology, etc.

Was just going to mention them. http://www.biocarbonengineering.com/

This has always been something I thought would be interesting to pursue. There's quite a bit of science involved when replanting a forest. It's much more than just scattering seeds.

What could possibly go wrong?

An analogous to that question would be what could possibly go right with this? This project has incredible potential, but also incredibly complex issues it needs to solve in multitudes as well.

From the blurb, "However, the economics of planting a LOT more trees were terrible. He was horrified at how technologically-lagged the forest re-planting industry was compared to logging or…well…any other industry. The lack of technology meant replanting was extremely expensive. Planters had to be imported to remote regions for temporary work, and were given nothing but the same rudimentary tools of the 1940’s to plant: Just a bag and shovel."

...and they seem to have at least identified the obvious issues. Drones don't care about terrain, so things that really slow down human workers - like swampy ground or alpine terrain - aren't a problem. I can see great potential in applying the system to wetland forest.

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