I'm just speculating about the economics here, and it kinda sounds like a high-school daydream solution, but I feel like you could artillery an area with some m

I'm just speculating about the economics here, and it kinda sounds like a high-school daydream solution, but I feel like you could artillery an area with some munitions filled with seeds and just rely on the natural rate of survival given a uniform-enough distribution of an airburst shell. Some quick insomnia driven commentbox math One 155mm shells has about ~11kg of payload capacity and a range of 25km. [0] 100 panderosa pine seeds is ~4g [1] 11kg means 275000 seeds / shell. You'd plant pines at density of around 1000/acre [2] The biggest question is seed survivor rates of being planted by artillery but let's consider a survivorship of 2%... 275000 * 0.02 = 5500 Surviving trees, or effective planting over 5.5 acres / shell. A modern autoloading artillery can launch ~70 shells per hour. [3] You'd have an effective planting rate of 385 acres / hour. Or 1.54 km^2 / hour. 13400 km^2 / year. With a single artillery that has a radius of 25km you get an area of 1900km^2. Survivorship is a major bound here Seed Survival Rate: 2% 9,504,000 trees / day 13400 km^2 covered / year But at 1% 4,752,000 trees / day 6700 km^2 covered / year In any case 100k/day seems quaint when you can plant nearly 10 million. Assuming 2% survivorship, covering 1900km^2 at 1.54km^2/hour you can plant the entire effective area in ~55 days, as long as you keep loading the thing. Comparing costs to this drone An Archer artillery unit is ~$4,200,000 [4] 1 155mm shell is ~$500 [5] It takes ~37 shells to plant 100k trees which means ~$19000 for munitions. Using that $400 million dollar fund entirely for this idea The fund intends to protect 5 million hectares, or 50000 km^2. [6] Let's say we want to finish this endeavour within 2 years, and assume our effective time spent planting versus moving and getting the project off the ground is 50%, so we get 1 effective year of dedicated planting time. One artillery piece can plant 13400km^2 / year. 50000km^2 total area / 13400km^2 coverage per year = ~4 pieces of artillery. Let's buy 3x what we need so we can just flip them out when they break down and have some spares in case repairs/maintenance take a while. 12 pieces of artillery is ~$51,000,000 You need ~46 shells to cover 1km^2 50,000*46 = 2,300,000 shells 2,300,00 shells at $500 / shell = $115,000,000 for munitions Artillery + munition cost is $166 million. Throw $10mil each at R&D + Testing, Logistics, and Administration/Staff and you're at $196 million with more than half of the fund left over. Hmmmmmmm...... I dunno it feels like it would be worth taking a couple million USD to borrow an Archer from Sweden and rig up a burst shell to see if it works at all. It has some precedent: there have been some shotgun shells filled with seeds before that actually worked [7] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M795 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M795 [1] https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/olympia/kids/WASeeds.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/olympia/kids/WASeeds.pdf [2] https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs141p2_021966.pdf https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs141p2_0... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Artillery_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Artillery_System [4] http://www.army-guide.com/eng/product2819.html http://www.army-guide.com/eng/product2819.html [5] http://www.pmulcahy.com/ammunition/howitzer_rounds.html http://www.pmulcahy.com/ammunition/howitzer_rounds.html [6] https://www.weforum.org/press/2017/01/400-million-fund-launched-in-davos-to-stop-tropical-deforestation-and-boost-farming/ https://www.weforum.org/press/2017/01/400-million-fund-launc... [7] http://www.businessinsider.com/flower-shell-shotgun-gardening-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/flower-shell-shotgun-gardenin...