Drone Technology for Plantation

BioCarbon Engineering, plans to seed up to 1 billion trees a year, all without ever setting foot on the ground

"The only way we're going to take on these age-old problems is with techniques that weren't available to us before," Fletcher says. "By using this approach we can meet the scale of the problem out there."

First of all, BioCarbon's drone flies above an area, mapping its level of forestation and reporting back on the potential for restoration. Then, the aerial vehicle swoops to 2 to 3 meters above ground and fires out a seed pod at sufficient velocity to penetrate the soil surface. The seeds themselves are pregerminated and covered in a nutritious hydrogel, giving them a higher chance of success.

Fletcher doesn't say the method is better than hand planting, just cheaper. He estimates the drone can plant at a rate of 10 seeds per minute. With two operators manning multiple drones, he reckons it would be possible to plant up 36,000 trees in a day. In all, UAV-seeding could be about 15% of the cost of traditional methods, he says.

BioCarbon, which is based in the U.K., won aSkoll Foundationaward last year and was recently featured in aDrones for Good competitionin the United Arab Emirates, where it showed off a prototype. It hopes to have a fully working product by the end of this summer.

Source: FastCoExist

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