One of the major issues faced by the world today is climate change. It has become a serious issue which is of major concern. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), an estimated 18 million acres of forest land, roughly the size of the country of Panama, is lost every year. This brings a decrease in biodiversity, loss of water-cycle and a rapid boost to global warming. Much is not being done in order to tackle this grievous concern but a NASA veteran Dr. Lauren Fletcher has come up with a solution which involves the use of drones in a very innovative way.
Dr. Lauren created a company called BioCarbon Engineering, which is an ecosystem restoration company. Working along with his team he came up with the concept of a 30 pound (13 Kg) UAV, nicknamed ‘Robin’, which can fly over the most rugged landscapes on earth and planting trees in precise locations with a rate of 120 trees per minute. Fletcher identified the problem of slow afforestation and credited it to slow and incompetent manual work. According to him, it takes a minimum of 15-20 seconds to bend down and plant a tree. When this technique is applied to a large scale afforestation project, the time taken is greatly increased, hence deforestation rates surpass the afforestation rate. BioCarbon Engineering drones not only plant seeds but also monitor them post plantation for effective plant development.
He put together a team of 12 experts with backgrounds in engineering, community development, ecology, biology and remote sensing. BioCarbon Engineering flies a fleet of tree planting drones 10 feet above the ground which gently fire seed pods into the earth at a rate of two per second. He intends to plant 500 billion trees by 2050.
Watch how the tree planting drone restores the ecosystem:
