Skip to main content

Drone Planting Trees



Climate change is a huge up and coming issue in the world we live in today. Trees are being cut down and used for things such as construction, paper, and much more. Trees live by taking carbon out of the atmosphere and releasing oxygen, and due to the increase of fuel burn and trees being cut down, our planet is at risk.

 People are focusing more on reducing the emissions created, which generally is a good idea. However, if at the same time we are able to replenish the number of trees that were originally in our forests, it would make a large difference. Obviously, it takes much longer than a couple years of planting, trees can take from anywhere from 30 to several hundreds of years to reach maturity.

 Planting all these trees is not easy, you have to assemble a group, find an area where trees are lacking, get seeds or saplings, and hand plants them all. There is no room for large tractors or machinery to fit in the area. Especially when the goal is to create the least amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

 Image result for droneseedOne company set out to fix this problem. DroneSeed, as you can probably tell by the title, uses large drones to plant large numbers of trees much faster than any human workforce could. In fact, according to the DroneSeed website, their drones can plant trees six times faster than a human planting force. 
DroneSeed's main goal is to access areas where people generally can't. For example, steep inclines, dangerous surroundings, wildfire remains, etc. With the first drone they send out, they survey the area and create a map in which the planting drones follow in order to create the best layout of trees. 
Image result for droneseed
Number of Trees a day (Hundreds) (
DroneSeed wants to be as effective as possible. Therefore, they've developed what's called a "seed puck." These "seed pucks" contain different types of seeds, chosen for the location. They also put them in fertilizer, which gives them a strong boost over the shrubs that would take its place, especially in areas where a fire burned recently or there was damage to the soil. These two ideas relate back to simple things that happen in nature. Birds eat fruit from trees, the seeds are not digested, and when they are pooped out, they are with other nutrients as well.


In order to keep animals such as squirrels away from their seeds, they place ghost peppers in them. This will not affect the growth of the tree, as it is a simple plant, but it will prevent animals from having a free meal with all the seeds they just attempted to plant. 

 In general, Drone seed is making the right steps in innovation. They are creating a clean way of planting more trees, which is needed for our planet to thrive. Currently, they are only working on small projects, however, in the future, they plan to expand enough to cover hundreds or even thousands of acres at a time.

Works Cited
DroneSeed. "FAA Approves Rare Permit to Replant After Wildfires." Daily Record News, The Daily Record, 12 Dec. 2019, www.dailyrecordnews.com/news/state/faa-approves-rare-permit-to-replant-after-wildfires/article_130aa32b-53dc-5540-af20-e6633f22d11b.html. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.
"How Drones are Helping to Plant Trees - A Cleaner Future." Youtube, uploaded by Mashable, Google, 6 June 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkNdrTZ7CG4&feature=youtu.be. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.
"How Long Does It Take a Tree to Fully Grow?" Refrence, Ask Media Group, www.reference.com/world-view/long-tree-fully-grow-c08a9e5c74bd2a61. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.
"Our Story." DroneSeed, 2019, www.droneseed.com/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.

"Using Drones to Plant 20,000,000 Trees." Youtube, uploaded by Mark Rober, Google, 25 Oct. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nJBFjKqAY. Accessed 16 Dec. 2019.

Comments

  1. Ms. LaClairDecember 17, 2019 at 1:43 PM

    This is a really interesting idea. How long has it been going on? Has it proven effective or is the idea still in the development stages?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousDecember 18, 2019 at 8:39 AM

      DroneSeed, the company behind most of the tree planting was founded in 2015. Since then they have been improving their technology more and more in order to perfect their business. Although they have not fully scaled up, which they plan to do in the future, they still are able to move into post wildfire lands within 30 days (https://www.droneseed.com/). Their technology is not across the world, but they plan to spread their company once they grow a strong foundation.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousDecember 18, 2019 at 8:37 AM

    Has there been any problems with heavy winds or rain effecting the flight of these drones? Also, how long will they have to land to get more seed pucks?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 3, 2020 at 10:14 AM

    Hello Eric, this blog post is very interesting! How does the weather effect the drone? Are their any disadvantages to this drone? It seems to be a clear choice in helping plant trees more efficiently.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Over the past hundred years, jobs have slowly switched roles from being solely run by people, to completely taken over by technology. Not only in places where you might expect, such as factories, and production lines, but also jobs such as farming, transportation methods, and even jobs at government agencies such as NASA. In the past, industrialization was praised. And rightfully so, it made lives easier, taking away the hard manual labor required to create mainstream items. However, now technology is reaching the point in which computers can reach a point of higher efficiency in jobs that require huge calculations. According to an article released by Forbes, “NASA used to employ human computers to calculate flight trajectories that helped get our spaceships into the sky. Today the aggregate computing power of human computing from that era is dwarfed by the device sitting in your pocket” Artificial Intelligence, also known as “AI” plays a large role in this massive job displacement....
3 comments
Read more
Have you ever been in a busy location and your data speeds prevented you from doing something you need to do? Well, that's the reason why companies are pushing out 5G networking. 5G networking is the same as the normal 4G, however, the range is much shorter, due to the wavelengths used called millimeter waves. These millimeter waves can carry data much faster than 4G will ever be. The frequency of the millimeter-wave is much smaller than waves for 4G. This means that 5G speeds can more than double the speeds of 4G, as long as the area is covered in receivers. (What) One main problem with 5G networking is the fact that millimeter-waves don't travel nearly as far as other frequencies. This means in order to cover a city with 5G networking, cell phone providers have to place tons of little receivers all around the city. These waves also have a hard time traveling through objects such as walls, trees, and other large objects. This means they have to create a map like ...
2 comments
Read more

Is Your Data Being Stolen By the Apps you Use Every Day?

(Ennis-O'Connor) Around 45% of the world’s population uses social media, totaling an average of 2 hours and 23 minutes a day per person (Ennis-O'Connor). Little did those people know, companies running these social media pages program their pages in ways that can be harmful. By taking and using data you posted when you sign up, make a post, send a picture, and much more. Many people know that data is looked at in order to show relevant advertisements. But do they really know how the company is collecting their data? Or why the company really wants it? Data is taken from social media accounts for many reasons: It can be sold to companies for advertising, profile building, and more in order to create revenue, it can also learn from the data, and sell specific things to specific people (Tufekci).  You may think that you can easily see these uses of “ad tracking” or other forms of data collection, as they are much easier to see. You look at a pair of shoes you woul...
4 comments
Read more