Abstract
Replanting trees helps with avoiding desertification, reducing the chances of soil erosion and flooding, minimizing the risks of zoonotic disease outbreaks, and providing ecosystem services and livelihood to the indigenous people, in addition to sequestering carbon dioxide for mitigating climate change. Consequently, it is important to explore new methods and technologies that are aiming to upscale and fast-track afforestation and reforestation (A/R) endeavors, given that many of the current tree planting strategies are not cost effective over large landscapes, and suffer from constraints associated with time, energy, manpower, and nursery-based seedling production. UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)-supported seed sowing (UAVsSS) can promote rapid A/R in a safe, cost-effective, fast and environmentally friendly manner, if performed correctly, even in otherwise unsafe and/or inaccessible terrains, supplementing the overall manual planting efforts globally. In this study, we reviewed the recent literature on UAVsSS, to analyze the current status of the technology. Primary UAVsSS applications were found to be in areas of post-wildfire reforestation, mangrove restoration, forest restoration after degradation, weed eradication, and desert greening. Nonetheless, low survival rates of the seeds, future forest diversity, weather limitations, financial constraints, and seed-firing accuracy concerns were determined as major challenges to operationalization. Based on our literature survey and qualitative analysis, twelve recommendations—ranging from the need for publishing germination results to linking UAVsSS operations with carbon offset markets—are provided for the advancement of UAVsSS applications.
Highlights
Rapid upscaling of afforestation and reforestation (A/R) activities is required in many areas worldwide, especially in the most biodiverse biomes, such as tropical moist forests and other regions affected by climate-type forest disturbances, given the ongoing global changes that are partially caused by unsustainable anthropogenic activities, such as fossil fuel consumption and land-use land-cover change (LULCC) [1,2,3,4,5].A study by Crowther et al (2015) [6] has estimated the number of trees cut down every year to be at 15 billion, based on projected tree densities
During the secondary filtering phase, we excluded multiple versions of blog posts, articles not directly related to Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based endeavors and articles associated with the agricultural sector since the study focus is on forest replanting
Throughout this review, we found that several articles frame the emergence of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Supported Seed Sowing (UAVsSS) industry in light of the statement “we will plant a billion trees by . . . ”
Summary
A study by Crowther et al (2015) [6] has estimated the number of trees cut down every year to be at 15 billion, based on projected tree densities This large-scale deforestation and degradation of natural habitats leads to the diminution of buffer zones, segregating humans and animals, increasing the probability of human–wildlife interactions and dissemination of zoonotic diseases [7,8,9,10]. It is important to select the most appropriate regeneration and site preparation techniques, as well as tree species that are suited to the site These decisions will secure the establishment and early development of the seedlings in the regeneration area. A two-person crew, experienced in hand planting, can typically plant
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