Aerial Reforestation - Tree Bombs
The forests are vanishing, that’s no secret. Not just the rainforests, no, trees are cut down or burnt everywhere, which makes global warming even worse.
So what can we do? Plant new trees? Yes, okay. But that takes forever and is extremely expensive. And not every area where trees should grow is easy to reach. So what then?
How about …
Bombing the shit out of those pieces of land!
No, wait, that sounds largely ineffective. Bombing something to make trees grow?
It can actually be done. But the bombs in question aren’t your typical “I will fuck up everything you love” – bombs but … Seed bombs.
Seeds from local trees are encased in biodegradable metal (yes, according to the sources it does exist) and dropped out of C-130 transport aircrafts.
You know, those things that had been introduced to the military in the 1950’s to lay carpets of landmines, among other things. Now it’s supposed to drop cone-shaped containers that have everything a new seed needs to grow. Like fertilizer and some stuff that soaks up the water in the ground around it. @suesa
Pretty neat.
Using this technique, 100,000 seeds per flight can be dropped and about 70 percent of those actually grow up into beautiful trees. Not bad, in my opinion. And a lot quicker than planting them all from hand.
The whole process is called “aerial reforestation” and can not only be used to fight global warming but also to repair forests that have fallen victim to big fires or plant trees in regions that are barren.
Make trees, not war!
Sources:
Could military strategy win the war on global warming?
Aerial bombardment to reforest the earth
Reforestation efforts improving as 'seed bombing' initiative shells out 900,000 future trees per day
Pictures taken from pixabay.com
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Biodegradable metals?
For instance magnesium should both do the trick and not be biotoxic
I was too lazy to look into it in detail but magnesium sounds good ^^
You always write a very meaningful and useful post ,,, i like it
My parents actually met while tree-planting on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, so reforestation is near and dear to my heart for more reasons than just the environmental necessity of it.
So reforestation gave us you ? Cool!
Yep!
We could take this a step further. Why only seed bombs? Seed rifles, using seeds as ammunition. Seed cannons firing seeds in long distances. Seed land mines to wait for anyone to step on them and.. BOOM, kind of stepping in a forest.. in a slow forest.
Great post! Yeah we have to care for the earth now! I mean at the rate trees are cut down every day will definitely hamper us and eventually we will be the cause of our own destruction :(
Atleast we can plant a sapling individually. Not only on the 5th of june always. One small effort will lead to the betterment of the earth's current condition.
I am happy to inform you guys that recently one of our state planted 6 crore trees in a single day :)
Let the earth live healthy and so we will !
It would certainly be worth a try. I was employed as a student on some government spruce seeding trial, and I can't remember exactly how it worked out but seems to me that it was successful.
Nowadays, I'm a bit of a contradiction because I love trees, but I'm the guy out there in the forests making it possible for large corporations to cut it all down in a most efficient manner. Everything is replanted of course, but usually with a monoculture. Does make me wonder why aerial seeding isn't used more...
I love the monster.....and love this idea if it'll work. Have they tried it yet? Any good results? well thanks for the info....very interesting. :) Oh yeah - following you.......... ......
I like it that someone cares about the environment. Boosting science community here is a noble endeavor!
I advertised you in my last beer tasting post and sent people your way! I hope it gets you more clicks and upvotes! Also, I used you picture, but I can edit if you want!
Cheers!
Cool, thanks! And the picture use is alright, you should just credit @steemitadventure cause he drew it for my birthday!
This is very interesting! Reforestation is NOT NECESSARILY expensive though!! I have worked and done research in reforestation in communities of the Caribbean, where I don't think this would work since human population is usign land in survival mode.. I think the greatest implications are for western edge of the Sahara desert... But I still think a human followup component would make this the most powerful.
Dear @suesa great information. Reforestation is important because forests are natural effective carbon sink. so plants should be grown at huge level.
Is there enough land for major global reforestation projects? Should this approach be emphasized in reforestation plans to combat global warming?
To all of you who are into reforestation, check out this search machine: ECOSIA
They use their profit to plant trees. - Only my search requests of the last year (over 2.500) allowed them to plant roughly 56 new trees. :)
And also thanks to @suesa for this nice post. :)
Best,
mountain.phil28
Nice reminder. I used it in the past but gave up because they use Bing as search engine. For many specific search cases Google is still better. I would love to be less dependent on Google but they are the best for my usecase.
As all search engines ecosia grows, develops and also adapt to you as you use it longer. But yes: Google Scholar is superior.