My Eco-Innovation Six

Seed-Firing Drones Plant Thousands of Trees Each Day

A tech company is helping restore our forests by using seed-firing drones.

Susan Graham, the CEO of Dendra Systems, says we need to plant tens of billions of trees every year in order to restore forests. We need to use technology to scale up our efforts of reforestation. Globally we lose 10 billion trees annually due to climate change and the ever increasing amount of carbon in our atmosphere. Restoring our forests will aid in stabilizing our climate.

Working with a team of passionate engineers, math scientists, and drone operators, they developed the idea of using digital intelligence and drone technology to plant billions of trees.

Susan Graham explains that “Drone-enabled technology plants trees with both accuracy and speed in diverse and often hard-to-reach landscapes. By combining digital intelligence with automation, we can combine the right species and location. Then we upload that into the drone, it goes out, follows that path, and plants those trees where they are needed. We put the seed into this pod. It’s biodegradable. It has all the nutrients it needs. And when the seed gets shot into the ground, it has a chance to grow into a big strong, healthy tree in 20 years.” 

Globally, up to 1 billion hectares of land could be suitable for tree planting, but we cannot rely on traditional methods to restore the land and replant forests. 

The Dendra’s drone can plant tens of thousands of trees daily. In the future, swarms of Dendra drones could plant hundreds of trees. Dendra Systems has a goal of planting 5 billion trees.