“We are going to counter industrial scale deforestation using industrial scale reforestation.”
That is the mission statement of biocarbonengineering.com, an Oxford-based startup which is the brainchild of former NASA engineer Lauren Fletcher.
By some estimates 26 billion trees are felled each year, globally, on account of various human needs including lumber, mining, agriculture, and urban expansion.
The startup proposes to use drones to counter such widespread, large-scale deforestation with an equally quick or better replantation rate.
The logic behind the venture is that replantation by hand is far too slow compared with the rate of deforestation.
Biocarbonengineering.com claims its technology can help plant 36,000 saplings a day with two operators manning multiple drones.
The figure is based on the estimate that a UAV could plant 10 seeds per minute.
Extrapolated to a year, that amounts to one billion saplings.
The technology is still in testing phase and Fletcher hopes he can move to outdoor field trials in the UK, Africa, and Brazil in a few more months.
The automated reforestation process being tested works in the following way:
Once a site is identified for reforestation, BioCarbon’s engineers send their drone on a mapping flight.
The drone reports the potential for restoration of the site and creates a 3-D map thereof.
The drone is then loaded with seed pods and sent off on a mission to seed the given area.
It flies 2 to 3 meters off ground and fires the pods at speeds adequate for them to pierce the ground and get embedded in soil.
The pods contain pre-germinated seeds covered in hydrogel, which carries nutrients for initial growth. It also gives the saplings a better chance of survival.
Although the efficacy of the method is yet to be proven beyond doubt, Fletcher claims it is definitely cheaper and quicker than planting by hand.
Seeding by the UAV can reduce the cost of seeding by 15 percent compared with traditional methods, according to Fletcher.
BioCarbon won the Skoll Foundation award in 2014, and a prototype of its technology was featured at the United Arab Emirates’ Drones for Good competition.
Once the drones are able to successfully counter deforestation, they could also be utilized to improve the biodiversity in forests across the globe.
In countries such as India where shrinking forests are forcing wild animals to foray into human territories, these drones could perhaps be used to seed forests with saplings of fruit-bearing trees or other vegetation that form part of the diet of the local wildlife to keep the forest self-sufficient for the animal populations.
Ajith Kumar S