Rapid Reforestation | How can we revive 7 million acres of trees lost each year to wildfires?
DroneSeed aims to safely and efficiently restore native trees after the destruction of wildfires through the use of drones, artificial intelligence and biological engineering.
THE PROBLEM
Our forests and grasslands are being consumed by wildfires faster than we are able to replace them. The United States alone loses 7 million acres of trees per year. 300 million acres have been deforested since the 1990s and to replant that will cost over 100 million dollars. The shrinking budgets available for national and state forest upkeep have led to very limited resources available in order to combat this devastating trend. Without new technologies to help keep these environments healthy, destruction and inadequate restoration become a vicious cycle that also goes hand-in-hand with climate change.
Climate change is both a cause and an effect of deforestation in the United States and this topic is actively calling on people to investigate new solutions. While the need is there and becoming more understood than ever before, low budgets are not the only thing holding us back from restoring our forests. According to the Southeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association, there are approximately 1.5 billion trees planted in the U.S. every year, but doing so by hand is both arduous and dangerous. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the logging industry has one of the highest fatality rates in the nation, with a rate of 73.7 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2010, which is 21 times higher than the overall work-related fatality rate in the United States.
The excessive risk for fatal work injuries in the field shows a real need for prioritizing research and intervention programs in order to make working in this industry less hazardous. By using new technologies focused on automation, AI and data collection, we can make this type of work both safe and exponentially more efficient for workers, while aiming to mitigate climate change at the same time.
THE SOLUTION
DroneSeed works in post-fire environments to plant native trees and vegetation using drone swarms that also spray to protect them from invasive plant species. By using drones with sensors to create detailed 3D maps of logged areas, DroneSeed can determine “microsites” where trees will have the best chance of survival. Governments, non-profits, and private landowners contract the company as a service provider and DroneSeed is paid per acre to plant tree seed, spray to protect the trees, and monitor their growth.
The drones are impressively efficient, working roughly six times faster than a human tree planter, and propagating up to 40 acres per day. A person can replant around 800 trees total in one working day, whereas the drones blast up to 800 custom-designed seed capsules into the ground per hour. To put it into perspective, one person using 15 drones can complete the equivalent of 360 man hours in a day; that’s the equivalent of 45 working days in one single day with the help of drone technology.
DroneSeed has shown phenomenal improvements in the areas of planting and protection, as well as surveying and monitoring the restored areas. By improving the planting techniques, they can plant faster, safer, and with payload that have shown promising germination rates. In the identified “microsites” where the drones focus on planting, DroneSeed protects native trees from invasive and competitive species, as well as from noxious weeds, that might otherwise destroy the newly revived areas. By flying very low and using extremely precise herbicide application, the drones can go where other solutions cannot in order to reduce the use of herbicides by 50% or more. The most radical change to tradition reforestation is DroneSeed’s use of high-resolution LIDAR and imagery gathered in order to supply critical information about tree health, forest stock, water features and hazards to customers and aircraft operators. By having access to such high levels of detail, DroneSeed is able to find the most ideal sites for planting and precisely target invasive plant species.
Fire severity and frequency is only worsening with climate change. If we want to actively fight climate change, then we need to work to restore the delicate balance of our planet through techniques such as reforestation. Nature’s capacity to reforest is in exponential decline, so an exponential solution is needed. DroneSeed is actively rising to the challenge, one drone at a time.
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