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Startup attempting to use drones to plant 36,000 trees a day
- nstart 11y agoLink to startup - http://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ http://www.biocarbonengineering.com/ To the Mods. Not sure if this has been posted before. And not sure if link to startup would be better. Please switch link if that would be better. Thanks :)
- fuddle 11y agoA link to the article is better in my opinion.
- laurentsabbah 11y agoArticle definitely provides more info :)
- meric 11y ago26 billion trees are currently being burned down every year while only 15 billion are replanted. Glad to see we're replanting a substantial amount of trees taken down every year, this gap looks closable. I had in my mind much closer to 5% or 10%...
- adamnemecek 11y agoWhile it's better than nothing, the newly planted trees actually cannot replace the old trees. You can read about the reasons why for example here http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/replant-rainforest.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/... (I'd do a TL;DR but it's actually pretty complicated, as ancient ecosystems tend to be).
- jmpeax 11y agoIt depends what you mean by "replace". It can be anywhere on the spectrum from an exact clone of each tree, to the same count of trees. You're looking at a narrow part of spectrum of the meaning of "replace" where you consider the ecosystems affected by the removal of trees. Another narrow spectrum of the meaning could be restoring the absorption rate of carbon dioxide. I'm pretty sure firing seeds from the air constitutes replacing the rough count of trees.
- adamnemecek 11y agoDid you read the article?
- iwwr 11y agoThe US and Europe is more forested now than it was 100 years ago, on average. Wood is no longer needed for fuel and ship building. Most commercial logging now goes on in managed 'tree farms' rather than virgin woodlands.
- reitanqild 11y agoAround here it is actually consider a problem: Areas that has been cultivated for hundreds of years are now filling up with bushes and trees because small scale farming is declining quickly and the larger ones don't send livestock out to grass in these areas.
- riffraff 11y agowhere is your here?
- reitanqild 11y agoLate but I'm in Norway, at least for now.
- praxulus 11y agoWhy is that a problem? If we don't need to use the land for farming or grazing, what's the harm in letting it fill up with bushes and trees?
- DanBC 11y agoYou lose an ecosysem and some of the plants and animals adapted to that ecosystem. I'd be interested to know if there's much difference between managed and unmanaged mini wilderness -- can you just leave a few fields to go wild and it'll turn out okay or do humans need to steer it for the first few years?
- iwwr 11y agoFrom what I've heard from farmers, fields left to the wild are hard to clear and it's more difficult to return to agriculture after a few years. As a matter of real-estate the value goes down.
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- william_hc 11y agoI love the idea of a company being able to do good like this, but how does it call itself a company if it's just planting trees? Who pays them?
- riffraff 11y agopossibly, governement/orgs trying to balance out CO2 emissions? I.e. you can trade CO2 within the kyoto protocol, it makes sense there would be a market.
- sjtrny 11y agoCompanies that sell carbon offset credits.
- tajen 11y agoI love the carbon credits system, traded on the stock exchange. It's the most lightweight and capitalistic incentive we can build around polluting externalities.
- gonvaled 11y agoAh the irony: and the US government (the US being the pinnacle of capitalist society) is refusing them at every chance. Isn't this what Kyoto was proposing? Has not the US (effectively) killed Kyoto? Whatever carbon trading is taking place in the US, is probably not internationally sanctioned. The US practices this international tactic of dragging its feet as long as possible, giving time to its companies to catch up with international standards (and to hell with everything else if need be, environment be damned!). At the same time, it will very willingly impose international standards wherever they feel their local companies are at an advantage. This is why lots of European population are skeptical of the TTIP: the US is probably sending us a Trojan horse.
- maerF0x0 11y agoits natural that players will attempt to modify the game (or keep it skewed in their favor) . The externalities have always been there, but some industries have never had to pay for them. I wouldnt be surprised if some industries are not even profitable once you account for their externalities. But macroenconomic principles mean nothing if you have greed. If one is greedy, then its just a matter of maximizing what's on your plate, with no regard of how much you're taking from others (potentially future generations)
- tajen 11y agoIf the drone is slow, say 50mph, they still need to throw 7 plants per second. I was a timber in the Australian outback (as a backpacker) and if you plant trees more than 10 feet apart, the sun burns them up, even with a tropical climate/wet season alternance. Like, pitch black wood. You need them close to each other and minimum 5 rows together if you want a self-sustaining hedge (and still the outer rows are doomed to die early). And I'm talking about heavily irrigated areas [1] next to the Argyle lake in the Northern Territory [2]. I guess not all places are like Australia, but those with desertification and ecosystem deprecation will require many trees at once. I wonder how they'll deal with this minimum critical mass problem. Overall this startup idea is excellent, for example thick hedges for areas next to the Sahara can stop the desert from advancing and revive the whole area within the perimeter, by rehydrating the winds and restoring livable temperature. [1] Heavily irriguated area above 38C all year long: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sandelholzplantagen_Kununurra.JPG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sandelholzplantagen_Kununu... [2] The whole page, with climate histograms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kununurra,_Western_Australia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kununurra,_Western_Australia
- Panoramix 11y ago50mph is quite fast. The competition is about 3mph, so 10mph would already be a 3-fold improvement. So: shoot 1 per second, or have a shotgun approach, or simply have more than 1 pass per drone, or multiple drones...
- fudged71 11y agoIf I'm not mistaken, "racing drones" are pushing above 100km/hr
- 7952 11y agoI would be sceptical about using this to stop desertification. The plants still need to be protected from livestock and kept watered. This doesn't solve the underlying causes of vegetation loss that created the problem in the first place.
- deleted 11y ago
- xyzzy123 11y agoMade me wonder if you could get a big plane instead and just "cluster bomb" an area with the tree pods. Then I read the article more closely, in particular the reference to "dry tree seeding by air". Found: http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/old-military-planes-could-drop-900000-tree-bombs-a-day.html http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/old-milit... ("Old Military Planes Could Drop 900,000 Tree-Bombs a Day") Although the buzzword here is "drones", it seems (to my amateur eyes) like a big part of the innovation is the pre-germinated tree pods.
- brohee 11y agoYou missed the part about them being dropped from 3m high, while the drone is presumably stationary? There is no reason to believe the tree pod could survive a harsher impact... So planes are out, the helicopters too (can't get that low with trees around, and way too expensive to fly anyway). Drones are definitely a very important part of it...
- Someone 11y agoTree seeds regularly fall from greater heights, so the seeds can survive. The pods will have a much larger terminal velocity, but I don't see how that would make it problematic to toss them from, say, 50 meters high. Attach a cheap piece of pulp paper (= easily bio-degradable) to the pods as an air brake, if needed. I have my doubts as to its cost effectiveness, too. I can't find calculations on the project's site and I do not have data, either, but I would think those pods must be fairly expensive, or drones incredibly cheap, or places where trees can be planted must be extremely rare for this to be economically the best choice.
- brohee 11y agoThe pod contain a germinated seed, aka a baby tree, presumably a lot more fragile than a seed. The whole point of the invention is that they get more trees that way than dropping seed from planes...
- 11y ago
- ch 11y agoInteresting. This guy should look to collaborate with Afforestt, who have a working method to reforest an area in a reduced timescale: http://afforestt.com/index.html; http://afforestt.com/index.html; might be a great outcome!
- acd 11y agoWhat is wrong with natural birds?
- vince_refiti 11y agoNot a great start-up idea unfortunately.
- vidarh 11y agoThere are too few of them to replant at anything remotely the rate at which we remove trees.
- crististm 11y agothey don't have "drone" in their names
- Raphmedia 11y agoEasy. Call your trained birds "bio-drones".
- acd 11y agoWell if you only deforest some trees and leave some left at even spaces the trees will naturally spread back to the area by dropping their seeds.
- ommunist 11y agoThese are OK. As long as they survive deforestation in sufficient quantity and there are seeds left to spread in the area. The last thing shakes limits of probability of effective reforestation by bird to improbable.
- netcan 11y agoThese pods sound like a new and improved coconut.
- spyder 11y agoAnd how are the pods made? Hopefully it's also somewhat automated and fast, otherwise the drones would quickly run out of pods to plant.
- amelius 11y agoBut what about biodiversity?
- ph0rque 11y agohttp://www.biocarbonengineering.com/blog/restoring-ecosystems http://www.biocarbonengineering.com/blog/restoring-ecosystem...
- ommunist 11y agoThis quantity is absolutely nothing. Area of the single forestry, let's say in small Latvia is around 30 000 ha. 1Bn, I assume, is EU milliard. So, drones can plant, say pine seedlings with density of 4 thousand/ha (which is IMHO insufficient), which gives capacity of just 9 ha/day! I can't see anything industrial in that. Chinese mainland reforestation programme plan was 4 mln ha/year 20 years ago. Belarusian Soviet reforestation bot PLA-1 (Designed in Homel) was able to make 12-24 thousand plantings per hour in ... 1977! What is good in aerial drones - you do not need to remove tree stumps. Makes the whole operation real safer and cheaper. But its capacity is still vary far from industrial requirements in reforestation. Disclaimer: I majored in Forest Mensuration, and did my engineering diploma in Forest Plantations.
- thenomad 11y agoI agree - I think most of the numbers in the article don't really explain why this is so interesting. To me, this is the key part of the proposal, if the technique scales: "at around 15% of the cost of traditional methods."
- ommunist 11y agoCost comparisons are tricky. Planting hevea plantation in mountain areas of Malaysia is one thing, planting oaks in Kazakhstan is another.
- noselasd 11y agoGiven the claim of 36k trees per 2 human operators, at 15% cost of existing methods, isn't the idea to use more operators(and drones) to provide the scale ? Why would that not match industrial capacity ? I'd also be interrested in how these drones fare in different geography, I've manually planted a handful tens of thousands of trees in areas where you can't drive any vehicles - quite different from the rather large flat areas of Russia and Belarus.
- ommunist 11y agoPLA-1, 2 human operators, 12-24K trees per hour. Any Kenyan or Brazilian small forge can make PLA-1 bot. You just supply plastic cassettes with saplings. Besides, saplings are far superior in survivaal rates than seedlings. I also manually planted lots of trees in different areas. Yes, you are right, when area is inaccessible and only manual planting is possible - drones may become helpful. But with 9 ha/day output, I am afraid it is cheaper to use human labour.
- facepalm 11y agoIs planting trees really a problem? I was under the impression that trees basically plant themselves if you let them. Also don't think you can simply replant the rain forest.
- fit2rule 11y agoYes, deforestation is a problem. You can't replenish a tree line if you don't have a tree there in the first place. So, this is something that will have beneficial effects - especially in a region like the Amazon, where deforestation is proceeding at a horrendous pace. And replenishing the rainforest is done research - its been worked out how to do it. The problem is its really labor intensive, so this is why the drone-delivery is key. Use drones to replant key species, watch the rainforest re-grow over 10 - 20 years.
- josefresco 11y agoYou need to look no further than the third sentence of the article to answer your question: "26 billion trees are currently being burned down every year while only 15 billion are replanted."
- facepalm 11y agoThat doesn't imply that it's technical issues that prevent replanting. In many regions of the earth, people simply don't care about replanting. And as I said, I don't think you can just replant a burnt down forest.
- pvaldes 11y agoShould be: 26 billion big trees are currently being burned down every year while only 15 billion of fragile saplings are replanted and those burned are the lucky remains of trillions of seeds and saplings. To replace a big cod with a cod egg just will not work. You need millions of eggs to assure that an adult fish will survive. With trees is similar.
- patmcc 11y agoDisclaimer: this may be specific to forests in British Columbia. It's actually quite complicated; the way harvesting work doesn't nicely mimic how trees naturally die and are replaced in the forest. So if you harvest with clearcuts or even selective logging and don't replant, you'll probably end up with a different forest composition than if natural methods (fires/pests/rot) had removed those trees. So replanting is done to try and correct that imbalance and get the forest back into a healthy functioning state as soon as possible. It's also much faster than allowing natural regrowth - especially in a clear cut area. If you replant you can also use improved (through breeding, not GMO at this point) plant stock, so you'll end up with better yields in ~80 years.
- josefresco 11y agoI went looking for a video of this in action but only found the following which features some rudimentary animations: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2mo07q http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2mo07q So good job on getting some press- let's see some hardware in action so we have something to get excited about.
- maerF0x0 11y agoFor comparisons sake a Canadian tree planter can plant roughly 3k 6" seedlings in a day for a cost of about $400. >"Fletcher doesn't pretend that the method is as good as hand-sowing, but it's a hell of a lot quicker." Also for comparisons sake, the expected survival rate of those 3k hand planted trees is 50%.
- chockablock 11y agoTree planting is a pretty popular and lucrative summer-time gig for Canadian college students (and other young people). It's paid by the tree, with the price depending on the terrain and the planting rules (spacing, light and soil conditions, depth). There is a lot of quality control done by supervisors, and it takes a lot of skill to plant both well and quickly. It would be interesting to hear some planters weigh in on the technology described in the OP. Agree the "# of trees planted" is not the best metric--the real question is how many of those will grow into mature trees. Some background on the job: http://www.tree-planter.com/?navigation_id=90 http://www.tree-planter.com/?navigation_id=90
- grecy 11y agoMy brother was a tree planter in Northern Alberta for 6 seasons, he was earning in the range of $500 a day towards the end (he was good) I went out to his camp for a couple of weeks and planted for a while. IMO the proposed solution looks great. Obviously it's not perfect and needs some refinement, but that's the whole point isn't it - we're always striving to learn more and make things better.
- vinayparamesh 11y agoGood luck Matt!!
- classicsnoot 11y agoI know it is too late for this to get fixed, but i am so tires of people saying "drone" when they mean "RPV". This idea in particular would be much more capable if they actually did use Drones instead of RPVs.
- robotkilla 11y agoThey should genetically mark these, patent the DNA, and then license the rights to chop down trees.
- greggyb 11y agoOr, much cheaper and legally unquestionable: Buy cheap land; plant trees; sell land or logging rights. No need to try to enforce a property right over something on someone else's land 20+ years in the future.
- swalsh 11y agoStupid question, but I've always wondered if it would be possible to genetically engineer trees to consume more C02 then they already do? Seems like a way to multiply efforts.
- ohitsdom 11y agoI'd be really interested in this area of research, too. And not just trees- what about smaller plants (even house plants)? I'd imagine an engineered "heavy breather" that people could easily grow in their homes and yards could make a measurable impact if widely adopted. It could also be tied in to a type of carbon-based tax to encourage people towards a carbon-neutral lifestyle.
- stouset 11y agoPlants don't just magick carbon away. They store the carbon as more plant. Ergo, to offset the release of a pound of carbon, you need more than a pound of plant. A typical American releases tons of carbon per year (literally, not figuratively), so to offset this will require tons of plant. Thousands of pounds of houseplant per year is... impractical, to put it gently. 80ft tall, 24ft diameter hardwoods can hit 50 tons at maturity (50+ years). So it seems that planting half a dozen to a dozen hardwoods would be enough to mostly offset a typical American's lifetime carbon emissions. Of course, when the tree dies, the carbon has to go somewhere.
- bryondowd 11y agoProbably completely impractical, but this conversation gave me a picture of people raising fast-growing plants in their homes/yards that they continually 'harvest'. This harvested matter than gets taken to a dump site and buried, capturing the carbon underground. I suppose the whole operation would have to either use solar power or be extremely efficient to avoid burning as much or more carbon based fuel than it buries.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
- pvaldes 11y agoIs interesting, but there face some major problems that they will need to be aware, The worst is the big overpopulation of herbivores. We don't want to just feed the goats. The real number is how many trees will survive at least ten years not how many you can plant. I'll suggest to add some biodegradable mesh cover to this capsules. Other is that many wastelands have been burned and lost his soil and are basically bare rock. A human can search for most favourable crevices but a drone normally can't have this level of accuracy. If we start trowing capsules to bare rock we just will have a lot of plant failures upside down drying at the sun And of course many birds will do gladly this work almost for free if you just put a fence, some shelter and several birdfeeders with soft fruits, figs or accorns.
- fillskills 11y ago26 billion trees are currently being burned down every year while only 15 billion are replanted. - How did they come to these numbers?
- brink 11y agoIt's also a little misleading because trees do get planted without human intervention.
- kansface 11y agoSure, and they die outside of human intervention too.
- sitkack 11y agoTrees don't get replanted in Borneo where the entire forest is leveled for oil palm. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/nov/17/palm-oil-malaysia-jeffrey-sachs http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blo...
- mpdehaan2 11y agoCopters take up a lot of power, more so if they need to drill and implant payloads. We should ponder the possiblity of more efficient lower-tech non-drone options, like tree-howitzers, or maybe an A10 warthog with an acorn gun, or some sort of honey-clusters-of-nuts cluster-bomb type payload for a B-52.
- alexpw 11y agoSpeed and automation of planting is one thing, and awesome to see! The second part is to optimize for the speed of tree growth. I can't locate the post, but a man/company had learned of a way to regrow trees faster, significantly reducing the number of years needed. It definitely had something to do with supplying nutrients, but placement may also have been involved. I hope this startup communicates and investigates speed of growth, rather than simply planting, so they can have an even bigger impact; however, it's great to see, either way.
- sasvari 11y agoI can't locate the post, but a man/company had learned of a way to regrow trees faster, significantly reducing the number of years needed. This might be the post you are referencing: How to Grow a Forest Really Really Fast https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9074473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9074473
- alexpw 11y agoThat was it, thanks!
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoDo this on Mars, then you've got something!