DroneSeed is taking an innovative, sky-high approach to replanting forests devastated by wildfires.
In 2020, we’ve witnessed countless destructive wildfires blaze through the United States’ forested regions. More than 8 million acres of land were burned across the country, and this year California, Oregon, and Washington state recorded some of their worst wildfires ever. Unfortunately, many local forest ecosystems have been wiped out and are struggling to recover. Thankfully, where there’s necessity, there’s innovation — to assist with wildfire reforestation, a Seattle-based company has devised an ingenious new method to replant the forests from the sky!
The company, DroneSeed, is using heavy-lift drones to replant the forests that lay in ruins. How does it work? Well, basically the company employs a swarm of eight-foot drones (which have been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration) to carry and release proprietary seed vessels containing a combination of fertilizers, nutrients, pest deterrents, and, of course, the tree sapling itself. This new planting method is said to be quicker, cheaper, and safer than manually replanting the burned down trees.
According to DroneSeed, the drones are “six times faster than a human tree-planter” and they can cover 40 acres per day. The company aims to make reforestation scalable and mitigate the effects of climate change. It can normally take several years to regenerate a forest after a wildfire, but this method can significantly speed up the rehabilitation process.
[Featured Image Source: Instagram / DroneSeed]