Ex-NASA man to plant one billion trees a year using drones (x-post from /r/technology)
independent.co.uk/news/world/exnasa-man-to-pl...
independent.co.ukPosted Apr 27, 2015, 3:46 PM UTC
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independent.co.ukHow are these seeds going to grow at sites where two, three, even four year old seedlings are barely adequate to compete? How much ground prep is required for this method to be even 15% effective for the 15% cost of current methods.
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Oh darn if they only they thought of that
7
Well I'm sure they have but it would be nice if they shared some of their thoughts.
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I wonder how trees actually propagate without our help...
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In some places once it has been clear cut it takes a very long time for natural forest regeneration without silviculture.
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My understanding is that a lot of deforestation, especially in Southern America, happens because of growing pasture needs... so how are they planning to re-forest areas that are currently used for cattle?
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In South America that pasture is good for 5 maybe 8 years and then it won't sustain grazing any more. The only way to make the land healthy is to plant oats and beans and plow them in the earth for a couple seasons. Most people don't do that. They slash and burn and move on.
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Ah but then they just descent deeper into the forest and slash and burn more. You get large tracts of land that get converted to rural housing and some just sit vacant. Best case scenario it gets ignored and a fragmented forest turns up, which is still much worse than simply preventing the original deforestation. It will also have a fracture of the original diversity since if the drones aren't operating with a monoculture, they definitely aren't using even remotely close to the 40,000 species of plant found there. I'd be surprised if they managed 1% of that. The soil, if left too long, often can't even support large amounts of diversity. Soil profiles in rainforests drain of nutrients very quickly - this gets countered by the fact that they are so productive and much of the nutrients in the system don't ever leave. Once you strip all that vegetation away it becomes unproductive very quickly (as you pointed out) and the soil has real difficulty retaining any kind of fertiliser.
Don't get me wrong, what this guy is doing is great, but I think it should be taken with a healthy dose of realism.
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Florida cracker cows are a smaller, less picky breed of cattle that can forage well in a forest environment.
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Seeds not bombs!
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r/technology for the lazy.
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Hell yeah!
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This is awesome. Wish i could pull something like that off. We need this. I also wish i could fly a drone.
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The contemporary Johnny Appleseed :) love it!
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right...
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A man named Lauren. Now I've heard everything.
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This is the most brilliant use of drones I have seen. Bravo. Power those drones with solar and you have yourself a hippy heaven.
Actually because it goes around planting so many trees he could power that with an open pit coal mine and still come out environmentally ahead.