Wildfires are consuming our forests and grasslands faster than we can replace them. It’s a vicious cycle of destruction and inadequate restoration rooted, so to speak, in decades of neglect of the institutions and technologies needed to keep these environments healthy.
DroneSeed is a Seattle-based startup that aims to combat this growing problem with a modern toolkit that scales: drones, artificial intelligence, and biological engineering. And it’s even more complicated than it sounds.
Trees in decline
A bit of background first. The problem of disappearing forests is a complex one, but it boils down to a few major factors: climate change, outdated methods, and shrinking budgets (and as you can imagine, all three are related).
Forest fires are a natural occurrence, of course. And they’re necessary, as you’ve likely read, to sort of clear the deck for new growth to take hold. But climate change, monoculture growth, population increases, lack of control burns, and other factors have led to these events taking place not just more often, but more extensively and to more permanent effect.
On average, the U.S. is losing 7 million acres a year. That’s not easy to replace to begin with — and as budgets for the likes of national and …read more
Source:: TechCrunch Gadgets
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