Drones that can plant 100k trees a day

Can you give any sources?

Self replicating trees?? This technology needs to be put under regulatory control before we are all turned into trees.

It should be pretty obvious that trees can't reproduce anywhere near as quickly as we can pull them down. It's simple maths that the net loss due to human activity is 6 billion. Trees will reproduce at a higher rate than they die if they have the space to do so, but why do you assume that they do? The problem is those trees were pulled down to make room for other things and the trees can no longer replace themselves in that area.

> There are more trees now than there were 100 years ago.

You may be correct. However, coming from an avid guitarists who looks at this particular industry in isolation from most people; there isn't "old growth" which is a unique problem in my industry. And what trees there are, less of them are considered musical instrument grade.

Also, the types of trees matter a lot (for certain things). We simply can't use Brazilian Rosewood for new builds anymore. It doesn't exist, and what does is heavily, heavily protected (To the point where instruments made before the export ban -worth $$$$$$$- are getting confiscated. Others similar to rosewood have been confiscated simply for looking like it's made from the Brazilian kind).

I think, in general we were aware of our problem as consumers of trees. However, we underestimated (for musicians) how the age and growth patterns dictate what makes a good tree for X. What was untouched for centuries simply makes better wood.

Essentially, the niche markets are really, really feeling this squeeze. So much so that Fender has switched to an alternative Rosewood for most if not all of their guitars, Taylor often uses (and pioneers in this subject in many ways) alternative "tonewoods" and has for years, simply because the wood that exists for these instruments even 50 years ago is simply unattainable now.

Some boutique builders are forced to harvest "forgotten" logs which sunk to the bottom of lakes and rivers decades ago.

Ah! So they're selling a service, not a tool.

I agree that it’s encouraging to see engineers and scientists focus their efforts on important societal issues. However, we need to find more thoughtful ways to use this technology. A good place to start is trying to deeply understand a context and need, before coming up with a solution. We just ran a workshop in Jordan with engineers who want to develop education technology for refugee learners. On the first day we took our teams to NGOs who are working with refugees and interviewed the learners. As a result most team scrapped their initial ideas. I wish learning to analyse a challenge through the lense of the user was a more integral part of engineering education.

I remember reading a couple of years ago about swarms of drones that would be used to police an area, and I feared that some governments around the world would REALLY love this idea.. mass control, mass spying protests etc.

Reading about deploying a swarm of drones to make this planet a better place makes me restore a bit more faith over human kind.

Agreed! As a mathematician/software engineer I have been looking for environment/ecological projects to work on, but it is really hard to find opportunities.

Does anyone know of good places to find opportunities to work on projects like this one?

The article says "a drone loaded with germinated seeds fires (!) pods into the ground at a rate of one per second". The video makes it look like the drone will just fly over the terrain.

Maybe the pods fall from say 10m and that is enough to get them into the ground (and not kill them)?

When my code crashes, it's usually because I forgot the algorithms

Assuming the drone is only planting one tree at a time...

I assume the "one per second" figure is calculated from the total tree output, not the other way around. As in, whatever rate the drones can plant per day divided by 86,400 and rounded up to one

Exactly. Create the right conditions with little grazing pressure and reduced weed competition and regeneration will often happen naturally. There may be technical solutions to bump this along but for most situations this will not be it. Where replanting is being conducted in the third world and this drone is used instead of local planters it might increase community resentment and disengagement. Working with communities on more sustainable livelihoods and helping them understand the reasons why it is better for everyone if some areas are left un-grazed for periods and allowed to regenerate is not easy but without local buy-in nothing will last.

You also need to water them and generally take care during early stages. You need to estimate how much of the 100K perish on a yearly basis due to these factors. Sounds like a kid put this together for a school project.

Yeah, this reads like one of those "technologies in search of a problem" pieces.

> The system’s engineers estimate that their method is about 10 times faster and only 20% of the cost of hand planting.

But is planting even the slow/expensive part, as opposed to other land-management issues? Is a "mass seedling boom" even a good idea for the emerging ecosystem in the first place?

> possible to plant in hard-to-reach areas that have no roads or steep, inaccessible terrain.

So then how'd they get deforested in the first place? Both agriculture and logging would leave infrastructure. Wildfires? Forest ecosystems have their own interesting lifecycles for that.

>fend off predators from eating the seedlings.

The traditional solution is seed balls. Functionally it's like burying the seed, but the balls can simply be scattered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_ball

Many (most?) trees are efficient at making seed, but what they really lack is the ability to get those seeds far enough away that they won't be out-competed for nutrients, water, and light by the parent tree.

Somewhere downhill and relatively nearby is a 'solved problem' for most trees -- but uphill, further afield, with appropriate soil depth for the seed size, in sufficient numbers, with less competition, etc. Aside -- ridges are one of the most useful places to focus reforestation efforts, in no small part because once established there, trees can generally propagate themselves across the rest of the slope.

Fending off predators is a concern, of course, but that's why you go for the large quantity approach when propagating by seed.

The claim these things can 'plant 100,000 trees a day' is clearly hyperbole. What they can do is plant 100,000 seeds a day, presumably at a much higher density than fully grown trees would be able to thrive, on the assumption that a useful number will actually establish.

While trees are mostly efficient at making new trees, that's not useful in areas that are heavily deforested -- and I suspect that's where this kind of technology would be most useful. Dungog in AU (as noted as a trial site in TFA) is a good example (gold rushes were especially bad for local flora, and in hot arid climates it can take centuries to recover). The breathtakingly vast plains west of Beijing that have been deforested, and now result in massive quantities of top soil being blown into the ocean each year would be a fantastic candidate for this kind of mass spray-and-pray planting.

Also, when re-foresting, pioneer trees are chosen - typically these are acacias (or similar) that have a relatively short life (10-20) years, are hardy, fast growing, and fix nitrogen. In degenerated older forests you may not find many of these around to produce seed naturally.

In Canada it's a semi-popular summer job to do tree planting for forestry companies. After the harvesters roll through and take process the mature trees you're left with a bit of a wasteland. Since the areas are highly managed there isn't a lot of natural young growth coming up to replace the harvested trees. Young people who aren't adverse to working long days and living/camping in tents for days on end walk these swaths of land with shovels on their back and bags of seedlings that they plant, and make good money doing so.

This is the scenario I see these drones as being useful for. The logistics of getting people on the ground in these remote areas can be difficult and costly.

Wouldn't have the same concerns for angry wildlife either!

Now, the question is, which industry sector cuts the largest percentage of trees. Now, answering that question, is there a way to do the same thing without cutting trees?

Answering that question and then executing a business plan is probably worth billions.

Planting trees to combat 6 billion trees lost every year is a pure expense, no profit to be made at all. At least not if you won't cut them down a few decades later.

This is a regional thing [0] though. We need to plant the trees in Latin America, Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The rest of the world is gaining forests.

[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/23/deforestation-whe...

>A drone loaded with germinated seeds fires pods into the ground

My reading of this implies the seed ends up underground.

A drone seems like the best answer here to get maximum accessibility and speed. Reaching 100k a day with a wheeled robot would be tricky.

Reforestation scenarios are always very rough terrain. Everything that isn't marketable, which is a lot, is left strewn about.

Because they can't hover

They sort of do, just with seeds instead of saplings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_seeding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_drones

I think the real advancement here is the autonomous component of it.

VCs would not throw wads of cash at a business plan that uses RC planes. But have it use quad-copters, and boom! They make it rain.

It's the novelty of it, basically. We're not yet inoculated, as a society, to the charm of quad-copters.

I think this kind of thing is funny for us westerners. I recently found this tech has been used in arid countries for possibly hundreds or thousands of years.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ollas+gardening&t=lm&iax=images&ia...

I do realize the ollas are for more permanent gardens, but it's the same concept. I do hope the paper version gets used, there are plenty of places that could benefit from it.

Does this only have to be used in areas strapped for water? I mean they mentioned Oregon, which gets pretty good amounts of rain naturally.

TL|DR: same place where the trees that were previously here were getting their water. I don't think the article is about planting trees in Sahara or Gobi. It would be more useful in the replenishment/repair after a fire.

Silly example, but in the U.K. (almost everywhere on this island) it rains 4629362619 days per year! (or it feel like this much:)

I do understand that U.K. forests are not diminishing as they are on Amazon but I think (not sarcastically) they are called Rainforests.

I guess it depends on the reason for the deforestation. If it is just for timber, then a cheap solution to repopulate the area would be taken up by the lumberjacks themselves (so they can go back in 10-20-30 years and collect again and repeat the cycle). If the deforestation is simple to create more land for crops/living areas, then this is irrelevant.

Nothing personal, but I disagree with pretty much everything you say :)

Firstly you're staging a false dichotomy. We can use both these kind of drones if we want to.

"Trees will plant themselves" < so they are idiots?

"people need jobs" is played every time we replace a brain dead job with some kind of effective innovation. There are no examples of us going back. Fortunately.

I could see it work. They only need to plant, and go back to base... Could use multiple drones, some working, some getting recharged/batteries replaced.