IISc Bangalore scientists are doing seed bombing with drones to plant a forest

Yep, unmanaged goat herds are a big part of the desertification problem. They can range on heavily degraded land (which is otherwise an economic signal to allow it to lie fallow). They'll eat even the remaining hardy plants down to nothing, finalizing the land's transition from forest to desert.

Pretty tragic how traditional (and sustainable) herd management practices were abolished via privatization in the name of "progress." The mechanisms they used to prevent the Tragedy of the Commons were dismantled, with predictable results.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2871076/overg...

ctack3• 9 years ago

In South Africa, untethered goats are illegal, but it doesn't really help. You can see how in rural communities on the Wild Coast, the few existing forest thickets are hollowed out. There are no saplings, as soon as one emerges it is eaten. So when the current trees die the forest is gone. The effect is that you can walk through a beautiful coastal thicket knowing it's only there on borrowed time.

happy-go-lucky• 9 years ago

According to the wiki at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_ball, the earliest records of aerial reforestation date back from 1930. In this period, planes were used to distribute seeds over certain inaccessible mountains in Honolulu after forest fires.

This article quotes the lead professor as saying doing it with big aircraft is expensive and poses logistic problems. So the only way to do it is through drones. I respect people trying to achieve maximum output with minimal resources.

Dropping seeds instead of bombs seems like a plan that John Lennon would approve of.

That sounds like a bold statement, but I’m certainly willing to approve of it :)

Good job.

shivaas• 9 years ago

https://www.droneseed.co/ based out of Seattle is building drones and seed cartridges specifically for reforestation.

abakker• 9 years ago

I came here to mention this company. Very cool product.

msnower• 9 years ago

Seems like a cool idea! The article mentioned the drones were flying in hard-to-reach areas. These trees will be safe against harvesters.

GrumpyNl2• 9 years ago

We do the same in Holland ( illegal) with weed seeds.

afeezaziz• 9 years ago

I thought it is legal to trade weed in Holland? How is it useful to plant weed at this scale if authorities going to root it out?

louhike• 9 years ago

It is legal to trade, yes, but not to cultivate it.

GrumpyNl2• 9 years ago

We do that in forests and cornfields. After a while we just check if they have be cleared yet by farmer or government. Dropping the seeds this way is cheap.

legulere• 9 years ago

Cannabis is illegal in the Netherlands. Only the sale of small amounts of cannabis is tolerated in licensed coffeeshops. The problem with this system is that coffeeshops need to buy what they sell illegally on the black market.

dogruck• 9 years ago

It breaks down like this: it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it, and if you're the proprietor of a hash bar, it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry it, but that doesn't really matter 'cause get a load of this, all right? If you get stopped by the cops in Amsterdam, it's illegal for them to search you. I mean, that's a right the cops in Amsterdam don't have.

olegkikin• 9 years ago

Guerrilla gardening

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_gardening

anotheryou2• 9 years ago

where do birds fail to drop seeds?

Does it need to be a denser patch of spreoutlings?

anotheryou2• 9 years ago

~sproutlings

nanospeck• 9 years ago

Very surprising, I just got my drone delivered from hobbyking today and was planning to develop the exact same idea but on more dryland where the drone can water the plants until they mature.

schiffern4• 9 years ago

the drone can water the plants

If you're in drylands you might look at land imprinting. Making shallow depressions pools all water and organic matter right next to the seeds, and allows infiltration in parched soils that otherwise run off all of the occasional rains.

https://permaculturenews.org/2012/09/19/imprinting-soils-cre...

http://imprinting.org/

mhb• 9 years ago

Isn't the weight of water an issue for doing that?

caio1982• 9 years ago

Just a small anecdote: in southern Brazil there are a bunch of protected tree species and there used to be people collectives which dropped mud seed bombs around city gardens (I don't know if they were the same kind of manure/soil India is using, but I am pretty sure they were actually semi dry mud balls to resist winters). The trick here is that protected trees cannot be cut down, never, no matter where they grow. The fee you pay if you chop one down is abdurdly high. Wherever the bombs germinate you will have permanent reforestation. I wish/hope there is something similar in India :-)

emiliobumachar• 9 years ago

That's fascinating. I'd like to know more. Do you have any links? I do speak Portuguese.

woliveirajr• 9 years ago

Search for the words: araucária, corte, licenciamento ambiental, árvore nativa.

For ex.:

http://licenciamentoambientalmunicipal.blogspot.com/2013/01/...

http://licenciadorambiental.com.br/licenciamento-ambiental-d...

forinti• 9 years ago

In Brazil reforestation is also used for criminal purposes. If you plant a certain kind of pine, it will, over time, completely overtake local species. In the course of a decade or two, you can transform protected areas into whatever you wish.

canttestthis• 9 years ago

Sandalwood and a few others are protected across India. Growing sandalwood without a permit was recently legalized in India, but cutting it is still illegal. Though it mainly grows in the south of India (not sure if its because of climate or happenstance). Other states occasionally maintain their own smaller lists of protected trees.

marcosdumay3• 9 years ago

The trick here is that protected trees cannot be cut down, never, no matter where they grow.

Yes, and people die because of that.

stcredzero4• 9 years ago

How do they die?

stcredzero4• 9 years ago

I wish/hope there is something similar in India :-)

Be careful what you wish for. If you can do something sneaky with biological tech for justice, others can do bad things with it too. When I saw the headline with "drone" in it, I immediately imagined an evil plot where some organization genetically engineers a plant to produce pollen with a tailored allergenic effect on one particular ethnic group, then seeds a particular area with it. What's more, they slowly ramp up the level of allergenic effect over the space of a decade, so that the effect looks natural. This will probably be within the reach of billionaires and smaller governments in a decade.

samstave4• 9 years ago

Wow... I am amazed that this is where you "immediately" thought to go...

What I thought about was drone-bombing marijuana on all private residences and public buildings of government.

Imagine seeding the whitehouse lawn with pot!

smt883• 9 years ago

tailored allergenic effect on one particular ethnic group

Happily, this is impossible.

curiousDog• 9 years ago

Nice to see you're still at it Agent Mulder ;)

overcast• 9 years ago

Just a little anecdote for the US. Obviously for other countries, like India, this is more of an issue. But it looks like we've made it sustainable here for a long time.

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stori...

In the United States, which contains 8 percent of the world's forests, there are more trees than there were 100 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), "Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s. By 1997, forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920." The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their arrival.

taneq• 9 years ago

It's awesome that there are so many trees, but don't discount the part about old growth forests. Many replanted 'forests' (at least in Australia) are monocultures of fast growing softwoods, and not remotely comparable with old growth forest.

bluGill4• 9 years ago

It isn't necessarily awesome that the US has so many trees. Forests can get overcrowded which is bad for the forest overall even though there are a lot of trees. It isn't just quantity that is important it is the whole ecosystem, those trees that are overcrowded shade out helpful plants on the lower forest floor.

Forests in the US generally depend on regular forest fires for health. The US has mostly been putting out those fires and the result is we have a lot more trees than is ideal.

saalweachter• 9 years ago

In the northeastern US, this is primarily "natural" regrowth. It's still probably a different mix of trees, but it is a mix, of soft and hard woods.

The northeastern US wasn't just logged, it was cleared, primarily for pastureland, and that primarily for sheep. Between cotton, synthetic fabrics, and cheap grazing land out west, it stopped being economically viable, so a lot of northeastern farmland was just abandoned. Over the next ~century, trees took over the once-clear pastures. Now you've got great swaths of woodlots with laboriously constructed stone fences throughout them.

jlg232• 9 years ago

In the United States, which contains 8 percent of the world's forests, there are more trees than there were 100 years ago.

Same is true for Europe[1], though I don't think that we "made it sustainable" - wood just was not this important as a resource anymore.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04...

Tuna-Fish2• 9 years ago

Wood is still an important resource whose production and consumption has only grown, and yes, we've made it sustainable.

As an example, Finnish forests today have 2400 Mm^3 of wood, which is nearly twice as much as they had in the beginning of the 20th century, we cut ~70 Mm^3 per year, but the amount keeps growing because the yearly growth is greater than 100 Mm^3.

The reason for this is that most forests have essentially been turned into monoculture tree farms, and carefully managed for maximum productivity.

spraak2• 9 years ago

It'd be useful to see this broken down by state, as while large trees aren't common in the Phoenix area of Arizona, there is increasing desertification there as more and more healthy desert is plowed to a monocrop or paved over for housing and shopping centers.

hashkb• 9 years ago

We have the most trees the same way we have the most cattle.

cjslep• 9 years ago

That statistic (more trees than 100 years ago) is less impressive when you consider the baseline (1920's) had already clear-cut most of the old/ancient forests in the USA (hence the conservationist movement decades prior) during the gilded age. This is why almost all of the Appalachian Mountains and east coast are only newer-growth forests.

A better measure would be comparing current forest size to pre-European colonization of Americas, if it were possible.

gozur88• 9 years ago

Well, yes, there are more trees than 100 years ago, but it's not like we have more forests. This is the kind of thing that makes that true:

http://i.imgur.com/oXw4E9d.jpg

Pxtl• 9 years ago

I'm kind of surprised, actually. I mean, if there's one country with access to cheap labour, it's India.

kumarvvr2• 9 years ago

You don't have enough funding here to pay labour to go around and plant seeds.

This is a cheaper and better alternative.

JumpCrisscross• 9 years ago

This is a cheaper and better alternative

Flying a drone in India require permits from multriple authorities [1] Their import is also highly regulated [2].

It may be cheaper to throw a couple bucks at a few thousand people than go through the license Raj. At the very least, it would be faster and more predictable.

[1] http://m.hindustantimes.com/india/us-citizen-arrested-for-ph...

[2] http://mashable.com/2016/03/02/india-drones-duties/#ib1XDcXp...

vthallam• 9 years ago

May be moving a lot of cheap labor across terrains with little connectivity is expensive? It makes sense to do this in unconnected areas where the road facilities are not good and may be in dense forests depending on the drone range.

suyash• 9 years ago

It's about long term, scalable strategy.

awkward2• 9 years ago

Hiring a small army of people to march out into the woods to plant seeds seems potentially counterproductive.

xemoka• 9 years ago

But yet, this is how it's done across Canada. Thousands of people plant trees for $0.115 - $0.35 a tree (depending on land, seedling size, etc). Seedlings come in a number of sizes (they survive better than seeds) and humans are supremely efficient at locating the best places for survival and actually inserting the tree. We've done many studies (UBC) to find better ways, manual planting still seems to be winning.

jonknee• 9 years ago

Why? People all over the world plant trees, it's not a demeaning or unproductive activity.

ctack3• 9 years ago

This project sounds like a bit of a throw in the dark. Fly drone and drop seeds. But there are challenges; there are still goats around; there is no water outside the rainy season. So at a minimum they'd actually need to plough water retention ditches (swales) and think about fencing. I'm glad to see people trying things and I hope that they realise spectacular results, but they are facing a complex challenge with a drone and a handful of seeds.

I think there is even a biblical story(which makes it a pretty old story) about the bad farmer throwing his wheat seed on the path and on unprepared soil. The story is not directly about wheat, but the point is that the allegory used in the story is/should be common knowledge.

fivestar2• 9 years ago

Is there anything drones can't do? All mine seems to do is get stuck in trees.

kumarvvr2• 9 years ago

During long train journeys in our childhood, we had people telling us to drop seeds along railway tracks after eating fruits and other stuff.

Guess we have gone hi-tech now.

Seems like a good way to automatically forest large swathes of un-populated land.

HarryHirsch• 9 years ago

This is probably the thread where you mention the beaver re-introduction program in Idaho:

http://time.com/4084997/-/

24gttghh2• 9 years ago

“It’s a dry area, so our interest is to bring back the rains.

That seems...very optimistic.

bluGill4• 9 years ago

Maybe, maybe not. Trees release moisture into the air (their roots gather this moisture from deep in the ground) which condenses into rain. So long as you get enough water from outside trees will increase the recycling of that water in the local area resulting in more rainfall than no trees.

This only works in specific situations though. I don't know if applies to the climate in India.

hinkley• 9 years ago

This interaction supposedly exists around Kilamanjaro. Seems reasonable to expect the same from the Himilayas.

But Bangalore? Sounds iffy.

24gttghh2• 9 years ago

I was hoping someone would reply with the specifics that the article ignored, thank you :)

schiffern4• 9 years ago

It's not as crazy as it sounds. About 80% of continental rainfall is caused by trees recycling fallen rain water in the soil back up into the atmosphere. http://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983

Obviously the specifics of the implementation depends on local geography and hydrology, but re-planting trees is pretty much the only economically/thermodynamically plausible way to "bring back rains" (eg desalination is way too expensive).

So yeah, they're actually onto something.

vermontdevil• 9 years ago

New England made a dramatic recovery in forest. I saw pics of old New England (Vermont) and it was basically barren. That shocked me as if you visit now, it's basically covered with trees.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/08/31/new-england-see...

chheplo• 9 years ago

Just a small anecdote: Coming from generations of farmer family and gardener myself, this experiment feels like a "Cloudy with a chance of seeds" for rodents and squirrels.

spraak2• 9 years ago

The picture of the seed bags in the article is captioned > The drone-dropped seeds wrapped in balls of manure and soil which I imagine would mitigate against rodents etc.?

ktta4• 9 years ago

@dang why was the post title edited?

It said 'IISc Bangalore Scientists experimenting with drone seed-bombing to plant a forest'. I see no problem with it, other than IISc not being as well known as say MIT. But it is still a very good institution and I think they deserve to be known. The name of the institution should be celebrated for their research, not just put behind a large banner of 'Indian Scientists' which gives no recognition to the institution.

Just like MIT/Stanford scientists aren't called American scientists every time some article about research comes out from that University. If someone doesn't know what IISc is, we know they can just google it.

frozenport2• 9 years ago

World ranking is about 200

ktta4• 9 years ago

Overall ranking is 190 (I assume you're looking at this[1]). Ranking by subject, it is at 51 in many subjects. That's because Indian Institutions tend to neglect fields other than mainstream Tech/Science because that's all they can get funding for.

Still, if their ranking is at 190, why shouldn't they be called by their name?

[1] https://www.topuniversities.com/universities/indian-institut...

0xFFFE• 9 years ago

So?

viksit• 9 years ago

Funny, I had the exact same question since I meant to come back and read this post but couldn't find it thanks to the name change. I'd love to know the reasoning behind this edit.

dang• 9 years ago

Probably a moderator thought most HN readers wouldn't know what IISc is, but sure, you make a fair point. We'll revert the title.

Often we change a phrase like that to just "Scientists" for brevity, but there's probably no need to emphasize nation rather than institution. Though in Canada we tend to put "Canadian" in front of everything.

ktta4• 9 years ago

Though in Canada we tend to put "Canadian" in front of everything.

Maybe that should change too.

Mz2• 9 years ago

It’s a dry area, so our interest is to bring back the rains.

http://permaculture-and-sanity.com/pcarticles/trees-and-the-...

It isn't inevitable that more people equals more destruction. We can act as stewards responsible for the environment.

problems• 9 years ago

What's with the fake Apple-style message talking about allowing notifications? Seems sketchy.

Maskawanian• 9 years ago

It is a dark pattern, you hit allow twice so that you can't hit block and they can't pester you any more. It is like the similar dark pattern for phone ratings. "How do you like this app?" you get some stars, if you vote anything less than 4 or 5 it doesn't redirect to the phones market for review.

IISc Bangalore scientists are doing seed bombing with drones to plant a forest

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