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Plant One Billion Trees a Year Using Drone Technology

Spread the Greenery

By Kanwal KhanPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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Every year 15 billion trees are cut down for a number of reasons which include mining, logging and creating new land for development and infrastructure. Deforestation has become a leading cause for global warming; extinction of rare species and an overall threat to survival of human race.

Why Trees & Forests Are an Asset

  • Since trees have the ability to hold ground stiff with their roots, it prevents land sliding in mountainous regions during heavy rainfall.
  • When planted near the sea, mangroves protect the land from drifting away with the tides, and in case of emergency like hurricanes they minimize the damage by calming down waves.
  • Rainforests act like the lungs for Earth because they provide copious amount of oxygen. Also, they are the reason why most forests receive rainfall, as the trees transpire water droplets from rainforests turn into clouds and that result in rain.

These are just some of the advantages that we have unconsciously enjoyed but with every passing day it is getting harder to maintain the same ecosystem given the requirements of modern day and changing lifestyles. Climate change has been eminent, however unfortunately it has only emerged as a topic for online research proposal of late.

If it was not for the UK based startup that took the initiative of planting trees in its hands, planting a billion tree wouldn’t even come close to being a possibility in near future.

Sneak Peak

  • BCE or BioCarbon engineering is a UK based startup that has developed an impressive and equally fascinating technology that makes use of drones to plant billion trees in a year.
  • Irina Fedorenko is the co-founder of this company.
  • This technology is automated, hence it is easier to widen the horizon and expect greater results.

Making A Million Elephant Size Task Possible

Motivation:

Currently the trees are either planted by hands or through aerial spilling of seeds; the former method takes time and intensive human labor while the latter is less effective and more wasteful of products.

Call for Urgent Measures:

The world is heating up at light’s speed; whatever needs to be done needs to be done urgently or this world, this Earth, will roast itself up because of the detrimental actions of us humans—hence there is no better way to address this issue than using an efficient method that yields swift results—such as these drones

How does it work?

The designer of this technology claims that this technique is more efficient than the regular aerial seeding, because when seeds are thrown through helicopters they get scattered everywhere, instead of getting into the ground.

Furthermore, testing of this method in U.K showed that spreading seeds using drones is more efficient and has longer lasting species of plants than those that are planted through helicopter. These drones are like modern day tractors, the only difference is that they fly six meters above the ground spreading seeds and giving new life to land that has seen better days.

Achievements

In June almost 5000 trees were planted in a day to rehabilitate land that had gone down to ruins in Dugong in Australia. This startup has also worked previously in South Africa and New Zealand planting above 25,000 trees across globe.

Future Plans for BCE:

BCE plans to curb the effects of global warming. In future, it plans to partner with an NGO to train local men and women farmers to collect and prepare seeds that will be sown through drones. They will also be responsible for keeping a check on ecosystem as the reforestation process progresses.

By doing so BCE will be able to assess the situation of mangrove growth in less than a year. Since mangroves as mentioned earlier are rich consumers of carbon they are able to absorb carbon 100 times faster than the terrestrial forests.

Is Reforestation Going to Solve The Bigger Problem?

With 15 billion tree plantation project underway, the co-founder of the startup feels that it is not reforestation that will help curb global warming or slow down the process. It is the excessive use of fossil fuels and decreasing water bank that need dealing on a first hand basis.

With china leading the world in carbon emissions, experts say it is important to curb these emissions that are causing the Earth to heat up and growing plants using drone technology is a short term solution to climate change.

Downside of This Technology

Moreover, the problem is that once planting tree is considered a viable option for countries to regrow their forests, it is expected to lower their motivation to save the ones they already have—which stands true because that will require more effort and financial resources.

Furthermore, farmers are likely to lose their jobs if this technology proves to be successful and they become yet another topic for top dissertation writing service to create research titles on. Even though it’s a far cry and hardly a truth that should worry individuals because this startup is fairly new in the market.

More on Growing Trees

Other than the drone project, there are far too many things that are happening to preserve trees and forests.

Felix Finkbeiner is a 19 year old founder of the group ‘plant for planets.’ After being blessed with the opportunity to deliver a speech at UN, he has taken the matter of planting trees—not one or two—but one trillion trees in his hands. By the help of UN Billion Tree campaign this group has already planted 14 billion trees around the world.

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