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Indian Scientists Are Experimenting With Drone Seed-bombing To Plant a Forest (factordaily.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: "I'm basically from that area (Gauribidanur in Indian state of Karnataka); son of a farmer, came to academia... keen to bring back my younger days, when the river used to flow for three to four months a year. I need to rejuvenate it," says professor KPJ Reddy over a phone conversation. It's quite apparent from his tone that this experiment means a lot to him. A day earlier, on June 5, World Environment Day, Reddy, in collaboration with two other scientists at the Department of Aerodynamics, Bangalore, Dr H N Science Centre, and the Department of Forest, collectively held their first ever drone-seeding trial on the banks of river Pinakini in the Gauribidanur area in Karnataka's Kolar district. "For that, the only way is to reach by air. Doing it with big aircraft is expensive, and take-offs and landings are a problem. So the only way to do it is through drones," he says, when we meet a few days later at the IISc Campus in Bangalore. Over tea with professor S N Omkar, chief research scientist at IISc, he further elaborates on their plans. "What we have in mind is to at least seed 10,000 acres, and we will be doing this every year, for three consecutive years," he says.
lots of ways to make sure most of the force goes outward and not inward (which you would want anyway if you are doing a seeding mission).
1 bomblets with a secondary low power charge
2 shaped charges pointing outward
3 use DIRT as part of the payload (you might want to use some version of Miracle Grow(TM) depending on the target area)
heck can you see a B-52 doing this kind of drop?? (bonus if the pilot is long haired and wearing beads/fringe)
Over here in Berlin, they are using natural drones.
Background: the jay buries all those things it thinks it might need next winter -- among them, of course tree seeds (especially oak). But alas, it keeps forgetting a few of them :-)
So just organizing an abundant oak seed offer at strategic places they do their job (not everywhere, alas, that's where biologists come in). And they *bury* the seeds (OK, they eat some of them, but hey, you've to recharge your drone batteries too). And *they even 3D print replicas of themselves*!
Now I'm not implying that one should not hack away on drones. Just that a complete knowledge of the ecosystem might be advantageous.
I am not sure it matters. Forests don't disappear because of a "lack of seeds", so just spraying seeds won't bring them back. What happened to the original forest?
Here in California, our live oak forests are slowly disappearing. It is not due to a lack of seeds, but a lack of wolves. The wolves were exterminated more than a century ago. Since then, the deer population has exploded, and they devour the oak seedlings, but don't eat the foul tasting invasive eucalyptus seedlings. In the presence of wolves, there are not only fewer deer, but they also stay on the high ground, and avoid streambeds where they can be cornered, thus allowing the oaks to flourish there.
We have big gnarly oaks that are hundreds of years old, a few tiny seedlings that will soon be eaten ... and nothing in between.