Beyond Traditional Reforestation: Exploring Drone-Based Planting, Sensor-Based Monitoring, and SET Technologies
Capturing carbon from our atmosphere grows to be of extreme importance as “Earth’s temperature has risen by an average of 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit (0.06 degrees Celsius) per decade since 1850, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit in total” (Lindsey and Dahlman 2024). Carbon and other elements help create a greenhouse effect, which keeps our Earth at a suitable temperature to support life. Currently, more carbon dioxide is in our atmosphere than is considered optimal for maintaining a stable climate. So what can we do about that?
A carbon sink is a natural or artificial process that removes or absorbs more greenhouse gasses, such as carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere than it produces. Oceans, soil, and forests are all types of carbon sinks. Protecting our forests and continuing to plant new trees helps our Earth maintain its balance, and some project groups are accomplishing this using drones, LIDAR, satellites, and seed-enablement technologies (SET).
No matter how big or small, reforestation projects are helping the Earth and all its species, provided they are executed correctly. For example, we shouldn’t go out and plant non-native trees in an area just to say we planted a tree. This causes issues such as bringing in disease and invasive species, which usually cause more harm than good for both the environment and the economy. To prevent that, The National Forest Foundation ensures that the seedlings being planted are from the forest itself. These seeds are “native seeds from areas directly adjacent to the reforestation site. Sometimes climbing high into trees to obtain the seeds, the Forest Service collects cones from the same species that they plan to plant, and from the same elevation” (Swaffar).
Currently, there are many reforestation projects taking place with large groups of people walking up and along hillsides to hand plant seedlings which they store in their hip bags. Some of these projects include “Forest Restoration and Diversity planting on Minnesota’s Chippewa National Forest, Wildfire Recovery on Oregon’s Willamette National Forest, and Whitebark Pine Restoration on National Forests of Montana” (Watkins). To plant these seedlings, planters use a special tree planting tool termed “hoedads” to “dip a small, deep hole in the ground. They carefully place a seedling in the hole, making sure the root structure is intact and covering the opening with soil” (Swaffar). The whole process takes about seven to ten seconds per tree.
Once these seedlings are planted, the job isn’t over. Monitoring the incoming trees is of extreme importance because we get to see the survival rate, the health of the saplings, ecosystem dynamics, and more. To do this the Forest Service will randomly select young seedlings to monitor them “after one, three, and five years of planting to ensure survival” (Swaffar). Some areas require maintenance, such as scraping away vegetation that may be competing with the seedlings or using browse protectors, which are usually made of wire to protect a sapling from deer browsing.
While traditional seed planting is effective, some complications arise in certain cases. As a human, it can be difficult to reach some areas of land, such as steep slopes or rocky terrain. Another issue is the fact that “tree planting typically occurs two years after a fire” due to a slow response time because trees take time to grow in nurseries, and the area is too unsafe to enter (Squires). An example of a solution is posed by the National Forest Foundation with the help of Umpqua National Forest and Mast Reforestation, using drones and LIDAR to reach these areas. The National Forest Foundation emphasizes that they “do not expect drone seeding to replace other reforestation methods; rather, it can offer an important supplement for hard-to-reach areas” (Squires). “DroneSeed, now known as Mast Reforestation, is a Seattle-based startup that claims it can begin to restore thousands of acres of wildfire-ravaged land just 30 days after the fire is out” (Olick 2022).
Mast Reforestation uses drones to deploy seeds “in proprietary seed vessels, which provide the nutrients needed to jump-start plant establishment and increase survival rates” (Squires). LIDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, technology is also used. LIDAR is a type of sensor that uses light to measure objects’ distances, ultimately creating a three-dimensional map of the area.
To get a better understanding of LIDAR, think about how your eyes work, but this time, lasers come out of your eyes. They shoot out, hit an object, bounce off it, and then return to your eye. Your brain measures how long that whole process took and forms an accurate depiction of where that object is in space. This is similar to how LIDAR sensors work.
The National Forest Foundation uses LIDAR “to map targeted seeding sites and use less seed per site” (Squires). This helps them and the drones get a better picture of the surrounding area, obstacles, forest density, and tree height. All this information is necessary as the drones are autonomous, meaning they don’t need an operator to control them. The drones control themselves based on the information provided to them. This allows for mass seeding efforts because of “advances in swarm robotics” (Asher, 2023). This means “many drones can work together simultaneously, supervised by a single pilot” (Asher, 2023). This “single pilot” doesn’t mean that an operator is controlling one drone, affecting all others, rather they are monitoring all the drones and their positions relative to one another.
Remember how we talked about monitoring these young forests as they grow? Well, satellites such as The Landsat 9 satellite, which is managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, can help monitor the area as time progresses. These satellites provide “extensive large-scale data sets overtime on the success or failure of reforested sites” (Asher 2023). It is important to note that using satellite data shouldn’t be the only monitoring method.
While dropping seeds from a drone sounds great, the hard part is making sure these seeds get into the soil. If a seed is just resting on top, there’s a low chance of germination, which is “the process of a seed starting to grow, or the act of causing a seed to start growing” (Cambridge Dictionary). Simone Pedrini et al. discuss this in their paper titled Smart Seed For Automated Forest Restoration, stating, “Sowing on steep hillsides increases the likelihood that seeds or seed darts will be washed away by heavy rain or moved down-hill to undesirable locations. Moreover, if the soil is too compacted, the container may break or bounce, regardless of the bomb shape and impact force” (Pedrini et al., 2020). Solutions to this can be found in seed-enablement technologies.
Pedrini et al. examine technologies with seed priming being one of them. Seed priming “involves subjecting seeds to pre-sowing-controlled hydration, sufficient to permit pre-emergence metabolic activity, but insufficient to allow radicle emergence, followed by re-drying for ease of handling and sowing (Khan, 1992)” (Pedrini et al. 2020). They also note that while limited, “such techniques are well established in agricultural and horticultural enterprises and clearly provide promise for the restoration industry and could be beneficial with little additional weight or building problems for drone-based delivery systems” (Pedrini et al. 2020).
Bringing our forests back to life and continuing to protect them is of extreme importance. From helping our Earth regulate its temperatures, to providing a place for its animals, including us, to enjoy and thrive in is something our forests are great at. Technologies such as drones, LIDAR, satellites, and seed-enablement technologies can work together and alongside us humans to help replant, monitor, and grow trees to keep the Earth a happy place.
Works Cited
Asher, C. (2023, August 31). New Tree Tech: AI, Drones, satellites and sensors give reforestation a boost. Mongabay Environmental News. https://news.mongabay.com/2023/07/new-tree-tech-ai-drones-satellites-and-sensors-give-reforestation-a-boost/#:~:text=Drones%20are%20revolutionizing%20large%2Dscale%20tree%20planting%2C%20especially,reforestation%20initiatives%2C%20and%20at%20a%20lower%20cost.
Germination | definition in the Cambridge english dictionary. (n.d.). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/germination
Lindsey, R., & Dahlman, L. (2024, January 18). Climate change: Global temperature. NOAA Climate.gov. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature#:~:text=Past%20and%20future%20change%20in%20global%20temperature&text=According%20to%20NOAA’s%202023%20Annual,2%C2%B0%20F%20in%20total.
Olick, D. (2022, June 28). Droneseed uses swarms of drones to reseed forests after devastating wildfires. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/28/droneseed-uses-swarms-of-drones-to-reseed-forests-after-wildfires.html#:~:text=It%20then%20uses%20heavy%2Dlift%20drone%20swarms%20to,root%20and%20begin%20to%20grow%20into%20seedlings.
Pedrini, S., D. Merritt & K. Dixon, 2020. Smart seed for automated forest restoration. Chapter 8, pp112-129 in Elliott S., G, Gale & M. Robertson (Eds), Automated Forest Restoration: Could Robots Revive Rain Forests? Proceedings of a brain-storming workshop, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. 254 pp.
Squires, A. (n.d.). Piloting drones as a reforestation tool. National Forest Foundation. https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/piloting-drones-as-a-reforestation-tool#:~:text=The%20drones%20utilize%20LIDAR%20technology,establishment%20and%20increase%20survival%20rates
Swaffar, W. (n.d.). From seed to tree: How we restore forests. National Forest Foundation. https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/from-seed-to-tree-how-we-restore-forests#:~:text=Professional%20tree%20planting%20crews%20fill,seedling%20from%20direct%20sun%20exposure.
Watkins, M. P. (n.d.). 2022 tree planting projects. National Forest Foundation. https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/2022-tree-planting-projects
