The new technique helps trees recover faster

Jan 31, 2009 13:01 GMT  ·  By
Just a few helicopters could easily replant significant portions of forest, devastated by tree-cutting or wildfires
   Just a few helicopters could easily replant significant portions of forest, devastated by tree-cutting or wildfires

British inventors have managed to devise a new way of planting trees in devastated areas without having to go through the regular channels. They have created a helicopter-based delivery system that lets tree seedlings wrapped in small plastic cones fall. C-Questor of Weybridge, Surrey is behind the innovation, which it says will bring about reduced costs and higher efficiency when it comes to replanting vast deforested areas with new trees.

The system relies on a plastic cone of sorts, in which a tree seedling is placed. The inventors say that they dropped the seen-spreading technique, because of the fact that some 75 percent of them were blown away by the wind in inappropriate places, and never grew anyway. With the new method, already-grown seedlings will be placed in sharp, bio-degradable plastic cups, which will then be dropped on the designated spot.

 

The cone will also contain some soil, and a bit of water-retaining chemicals, which will help the “baby” tree survive until the plastic dissolves. To help maintain the cone's vertical position, three plastic legs spring up from the cone once it's deployed from the helicopter. Gravity forces the entire system into the ground, which ensures that, once the plastic is gone, the new tree can properly feed itself from the soil.

 

The cones are ejected from a device the size of a mattress, which is fixed underneath the helicopter. A single one can carry up to 200 projectiles, which means that the costs associated with replanting trees on a wider surface are drastically reduced. Otherwise, to seed a large area, numerous volunteers would have to work long hours, with no assurance that their effort will be rewarded. Naturally, the new system is not exactly bullet-proof either, but it does ensure a high success rate.

 

It could be used in the Amazon at first, as Brazil already expressed an interest in acquiring the rights to use it. Large portions of the rain forest in the country have been ransacked by farmers and cattle growers, seeking to expand their own land, and this state of affairs jeopardizes the integrity of the ecosystems in the area.