Given the claim of 36k trees per 2 human operators, at 15% cost of existing methods, isn't the idea to use more operators(and drones) to provide the scale ? Why would that not match industrial capacity ?

I'd also be interrested in how these drones fare in different geography, I've manually planted a handful tens of thousands of trees in areas where you can't drive any vehicles - quite different from the rather large flat areas of Russia and Belarus.

PLA-1, 2 human operators, 12-24K trees per hour. Any Kenyan or Brazilian small forge can make PLA-1 bot. You just supply plastic cassettes with saplings. Besides, saplings are far superior in survivaal rates than seedlings.

I also manually planted lots of trees in different areas. Yes, you are right, when area is inaccessible and only manual planting is possible - drones may become helpful. But with 9 ha/day output, I am afraid it is cheaper to use human labour.

links or gtfo. jk, but seriously, are their links to studies and pictures? 12k saplings, in my mind, take up a lot of space.

Why just picture it in your mind, and not spend the trivial effort to actually work it out?

It's a square with 110 trees to a side. A rough overestimate at 20ft spacing gives us a guess of less than a quarter of a square mile per day, or maybe 75 square miles of saplings planted per year.

For comparison, the U.S. has something on the order of 3-3/4 million square miles of forest.

The machine that does it, not the end result. Im pretty comfortable imagining what a forest looks like, thanks. The Poster made comments that implied reforestation is a solved problem. Though my experience is anecdotal, i have to call bullshit. As someone else posted, flat places like each of his examples can be seeded relatively easy. But what about jungles, mountains, etc.? Hence my desire to see the device that can magically fix all the forests but for some unexplained reason is not being used in Africa, the Philippines, our Central America.

The truth is that if you can drive a big tree planting tank there, you can also walk there. RPV delivered seeds seem like they would be useful for places that are not so easy to get to.

Also, and you may know this, forests are not trees; forests are biomes that rely on trees to support complex webs of interrelated life forms from a micro- to macroscopic scale. A giant, soviet era thing that plants saplings in bally great blocks sounds good on paper, but i wonder how well it actually works.

I probably should have worded my original query more specifically and in a manner that the HN pedants are more comfortable with. My apologies.

Thank you, you made a very good point. ПЛА-1 and its later successor ПЛА-1А were intended to plant pine and spruce saplings. These are major forest species in the European part of the former Soviet Union. However, you put it right, forests are not plantations. Industrial forest plantations for pulp and paper, for wood (pine reaches the right size at the age of 75yrs), are _not_ exactly forests. They may look like forests, but the do not support that much biological species as the natural forest ecosystems. Thing is if the private property is sacred and there is private property on forest lands, biodiversity of natural forests will inevitably be sacrificed to achieve short-term profits. Its a ... natural process, if you can call greed natural. And these forest plantations must be planted in technologically efficient way. Drones are not bad if done right for right commercial species.

With more specificity, we begin to zero in on the nature of your OG comment. In truth, the devices you mentioned are an apples to aardvarks comparison. Ideally, and again anecdotally, reforestation should be a optimized process that replicates the natural occurrence thereof as much as is possible. Put another way, how do we do what the forest does but faster and in places the forest may not be able to? Rows and hedges can exist in nature, but IME clusters and sprays are more common. IF this company used actual Drones, not RPVs, i could imagine some bright person[s] coming up with different patterns for different species in different regions. Also, it would be swell to plant more than trees; a full stack solution seems best. And why stop at fixed biologicals? Drones that fly escort for bees; drones that go after certain invasive species during their mating seasons; drones that bury themselves like cicada grubs and come out when some biological imbalance trips their wake up sensors. With the entirety of biology as a play book, we as tricky primates have a lot of capability to construct and support our natural surroundings.

I am against industrial methods in anything, and this marginalizes me here in the West, and that is ok. People want to build money machines that crank out profit on a predictable schedule and that is fine in my book because i believe time will prove the error in that approach to living. If we want to get in the biology game, however, "crazy anarchists" and wierdos might have the upper hand in the idea arena, as trying to regiment everything, or even anything, in a massively complicated innately complex web of interaction that does not cease at any point is a fools errand.

...shit, i need a drone to come guide me back to my original point.

well, as you can see apples are doing better than aardwarks when thrown.

seriously, he throws around terms that bring up video games on google but no "planting bots" from 1970.

May I draw your attention that Google was made a little bit later, and the Internet too.

i am having a hard time believing you are serious. are you actually saying that reason their are no pictures is because your possibly fantastical tree tractor was made in the 70s and google was made in the 90s?

https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=can...

https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=mus...

https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=cot...

I provided enough evidence of its existence below. Besides I worked with its early model myself. Since when google and the internet became the proof of everything?

While i think you make an interesting if often neglected point about chickens and eggs, chicken coops have a much firmer chronology and use. I maintain that if there was such a device as you described, and i have my doubts, that i'd be able to find some sort of evidence online based on the coolness of gargantuan soviet era devicery.

So, before i write this off as a complete waste of time, can you link me to any pictures or descriptions or even (gasp) books wherein i could learn about the PLA-1 or its successor, the PLA-1A? Cyrillic or english is fine.

Repeatedly posted from below: http://goo.gl/RtVgTd <- Page 21, sorry for Russian source. It takes 4000 saplings at once, and goes at 6 km/hr, can plant every at 0.5m, gives you 12K saplings/hr. You have to recharge it with cassettes with saplings.

I agree - I think most of the numbers in the article don't really explain why this is so interesting.

To me, this is the key part of the proposal, if the technique scales:

"at around 15% of the cost of traditional methods."

Cost comparisons are tricky. Planting hevea plantation in mountain areas of Malaysia is one thing, planting oaks in Kazakhstan is another.

Can you please share more information about the reforestation bot PLA-1 ?

Also ,why isn't robot use in reforestation more common ? 12-24k plantings/hour sounds fantastic.

I've been googling around, and I can't find anything online about the PLA-1. I even tried "russian tree planting machine". General searches for tree planting machines turned up this [1] at the top of the results, but they're only claiming a max of 4000-5000 plantings per day - much less than GP claimed for the PLA-1.

So, I dunno. GP sounds like they know what they're talking about, but I would still like to see some references.

[1] http://www.damcon.nl/en/machines/tree-planting-machines/tree...

Look for ПЛА-1 and ПЛА-1А. Sorry, the abbreviation stands for Automatic Afforestation Device (Приспособление лесопосадочное автоматическое), designed at Institute of Forest in Homel. I worked there after university. At 6 km/hr and planting 2 saplings per meter it achieves 12 000 saplings /hr.

This is Galmor Tree Planter with load of 10000 saplings -http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/ODW1002.pdf/$FILE/ODW1002.pdf It is not so portable comparing to its Soviet competitor.

Oh, in the same source there is a new one - МЛА-1А «Илана». Can plant forests at 3,75km/h with same cassette feeder 4000 saplings per load on clearings _with_ tree stumps (if stumps density is below 600 stumps/ha.

That seems pretty impressive, actually. Are these machines being marketed outside of Belarus?

No. No one tried to the best of my knowledge. I personally know to whom I may address your potential enquiry, but I doubt the existing process of decision making in Belarus will produce any fast answers. The best way is to go there and talk if you are really interested.

Thanks for the offer, but I was just curious. If the machine is really superior to what's on the market then it seems like a business opportunity for someone with know-how and industry contacts - but that's not me :)

Sure. This was the only reforestation automaton made (ПЛА-1) in the USSR. Take any Soviet reference for mechanical planting of forests - it will be there. Technically its an add-on to large forest plough ПКЛ-70 supplied with cassette feeder. http://goo.gl/RtVgTd <- Page 21, sorry for Russian source. It takes 4000 saplings at once, and goes at 6 km/hr, can plant every at 0.5m, gives you 12K saplings/hr. You have to recharge it with cassettes with saplings. Nothing fantastic, ideally works for forest plantations in the Northern hemisphere.

But you can just add more drones. 2 people planting 36k trees per day is no small feat.

> But you can just add more drones. 2 people planting 36k trees per day is no small feat.

According to GP:

>> Chinese mainland reforestation programme plan was 4 mln ha/year 20 years ago.

>> So, drones can plant, say pine seedlings with density of 4 thousand/ha (which is IMHO insufficient), which gives capacity of just 9 ha/day

Suppose 180 working days a year that would give: 4 * 10^6 / (180 * 9/2) ~= 5000 operators

That doesn't actually sound too bad, not sure how many drones per operator are counted for in the 36,000 trees per 2 operators with multiple drone numbers.

One a side note this could still be well above the cost of human labor in third-world countries.

Thank you hurin, this is a good point. There are marginal costs however. Traditional planting sword is unbreakable. Drones are not. ПЛА-1 was widely criticised in the USSR for its cassette's low quality, and often failures (this is why ПЛА-1А was designed). The other thing is that drones offer only pre-germinated seedling as planting material. This goes well with light seedlings like pine and spruce. But how many oak acorns can be loaded? What about ultra-light seeds, like birch? What about tropical species? The technology is promising, but it will take at least 20 years for it to make its way to industrial forestry with trial and error. I myself would appreciate to see planting drones pack in every forestry range in Russia (with their ZALA UAV they can do that). But I am afraid this particular one is more of a hoax to cover some scheme behind trading carbon quotas, than a real thing. I would like to think otherwise, but years in the industry made me cynical. I am deeply sorry about that.

Well, here is traditional way. 16 kg tool - planting sword. No kids allowed. Up, down, turn to yourself, put sapling turn from yourself, up, step forward, repeat. 8 hrs straight, 2 breaks 30 min each. Roughly 30 sec/sapling is bad speed. 1000 saplings per man/day. Modern tech is better, when you plant pots into machine-made hole, but I never practiced that.

UPD: here is the video instruction for this process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6MhT7dbB1c

Nice demo. Here's a video of guys doing it at production speed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU-7NffSSHk

Another common tool (in the US at least) is the Hoedad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1gPVuITMgc

Thanks! That's a good one. These peons are using very light version, probably 6 kilos or such. The original Kolesov's planting sword is very heavy. But mind the Darth Vader style of breating in that video. This is very true.

I think the problem is: most of the machines and bots you mention can work only in the plains, and in areas reachable by road. What if there are no roads, as is the case in many remote areas?

Ever been in Russia apart the large cities? No roads. Just mere directions. Technically you have to clear the area from stumps and use large tractor with massive forest plough and automaton attached.

Why do you need to remove tree stumps?

Disclaimer: my forestry education is only from farming school.

In cases where you're using pull-behind row planters (like this: https://www.kelcomaine.com/webpics/productpics/tp300/tp300-0...), catching on a stump could tear up the equipment or throw the rider off.

That is correct. The most costly operation in afforestation by planting is removing stumps. We did it with explosives.

BigDog would make an excellent tree planting robot.

It's way too slow. A drone has the advantage of being able to navigate extremely rugged terrain, largely avoiding obstacles, and can traverse across rivers without getting wet.

The sorts of areas that desperately need replanting are usually a wasteland to stumps, branches, brush, and lots of rocks.

One of the most efficient Soviet afforestation technology for pine forests is - wait until the good seed year comes in ripe forest. Cut it down the next year. Cones will land. Burn the place with controlled fire. Stumps will go, cones will open! Bummer, young forest in 3-4 years growing real fast.

IIRC pine forests often have microsaplings, lots and lots of tiny pine saplings that will start growing once the old trees goes away.

called podrost in Russia. Not in all types of forests. often they die when you remove canopy. bugs come.