We Seeded a Mountain With a Drone. Here's What Happened.

How can a seeding drone help to protect and save a mountain? When fire becomes recurring, regeneration cannot be improvised. Portugal is entering a future where fire is no longer exceptional, it's cyclical and we must be ready for it. In this new context, we need to face a country that has one of the highest wildfire rates created by arson. A country that has eucalyptus as the species most present in the whole territory. Drier and more extreme summers due to climate change create the perfect storm for more intense and rapid wildfires never seen before. So who would have thought the answer would come from the sky? Welcome to Silvera Tech. We're regenerating 230 hectares of mountain terrain and bringing three abandoned schist villages back to life. Well, after the fire we arrived here and we noticed that most, not to say all, of the native ground cover and vegetation basically below two meters in height pretty much all burned down. The plants that thrived that are still alive are the ones that are native from habitats where brush fires are a part of the ecosystem. So that in our case would be acacia and eucalyptus. And then we have oaks which also survived in a large number. Singed but they're alive and sprouting as well. And every tale needs the arrival of an unexpected hero. In this case a flying farmer. It made a lot of sense that we would acquire a drone and then we would acquire the knowledge to actually fly it and use it instead of depending on someone else. I mean ownership matters like in these uncertain times for a period in the future that we can expect even more extreme weather events to be more regular. We need to have the tools at our disposal. Having the best tools with us allows us to not only use them here but maybe even elsewhere in this mountain range. It's so remote and such difficult access that like it really needs someone with deep understanding of the land to do anything here especially flying a drone. But having the drone ourselves implies learning how to fly and pilot professional grade equipment. It was not an easy learning process. From binging all the videos and online courses I could humanly consume to having lessons and support from an official agricultural drone teacher. It's just over here we have zero perception of what's happened but over there it just went over a tree. Sowing by hand here in Silveira is very difficult. So there's two main things. So one of them is the terrain. It's very steep, it's very difficult, very rocky. So like the access to the most part of the land is very hard. So doing it by hand is just like very unrealistic and energy intensive. The other thing is when you seed by hand it doesn't spread very well so it's not very consistent. The main advantage of seeding by drone is that the drone is very precise on seeding. Like you say oh I want to see 30 kilos per hectare it's going to see like those 30 kilos very evenly. Yeah evenly that's the word. So we have areas that are designated on the agricultural software that we use. But to get a really good understanding of where the roads are and stuff we need to do an entire photo map of the area with the little drone, well the medium drone. And then upload that to the agricultural software and then we're going to have an updated map to work with. And that turbine is it as you can see here we have a direct line of sight with the drone through the whole valley. What's that? This is the RTK unit, real-time kinematics. It's a GPS positioning so the drone has very very accurate readings. It has a very cute design. Yeah it's nice. So mapping involves doing flights around the area with the medium drone and then importing that data into the T50 software where we can then get the elevation and then plan the routes and edit them according to what's in the way of the actual flight. This allows for lower altitude flights and better dispersion of seeds which is what we're looking to do. Landing zone. Can you turn your spot on again please mate? We just need to do one thing. I can't fly. Fog. Fog yeah heavy fog. The mountain has its perks and sometimes the weather plays tricks on us. But we will always have tomorrow. Welcome to my office. Mapping with good weather. What a luxury. Yeah going good. We've got quite a few areas mapped out now for detailed white clouds so we can plan the altitude. Just finishing this one up now and then we'll be coming back. We'll be landing and in the drone. Let's zoom out for a second. We're here. Central Portugal. Deep in the mountains of Rosa. This is our land totaling 230 hectares of area and before a single seed is dropped we need to know every meter of it. The mapping drone breaks down the land into manageable zones. The groundwork is what allows the DJI Agris T50 to come in and do its job. The importance in seeding after a fire has to do with multiple factors. One of them is erosion as I mentioned before. Having some ground cover some plants that absorb the impact of water and that slow down the path of the water as it's running downhill. All of this will help keep the soil in place as well as the function that the root systems of these plants play in keeping the structure of the soil together. And of course anything we sow now that has a nutritional value for our herbivorous friends is good. We made a few mistakes along the way like underestimating how sensitive the obstacle avoidance system was and generally planning as if it was one of the normal drones that we fly when it's not. A rolling start. We've got a rolling start. We're here. Yeah here looks good mate. Yeah we're right in front of it now. Sweet. So when you turn it on it takes a minute to find all the satellites. That's the controller I thought it was a little robot face or something. Yeah it's a robot face yeah. You're right. A few proposed solutions that didn't actually work out in the field was building a large platform and then an even larger platform to land on and even trying to pick bits of land that we thought were going to work when in fact they were actually too small. That's going to turn. Learning took its time but after every hour of study, every failed attempt, every recalibration, the knowledge is now ours and now the real work begins. In the field the workflow revolves around the generator. So we have this massive, I call it the power bank, it's this massive generator and it goes on the back of the truck with the T50. We get to the field, we deploy the T50 doing its automated flight runs so it can follow the ground really well and we can keep it in the air pretty much the whole time. Every green patch on this map represents a hillside already seeded from the sky. Now it's time for the yellow zones, the next chapter of this mountain's recovery. Very nice, nice and gently. What she said! There we go, a little bit further. That's also what she said! Stop it John! Without this f*****g thing. No you're not. That's what she said for a few hours. That's what she said. Yeah I was just quoting you. That's why you came up, you were like oh my god. It's a light, the seeds are heavy. Just to show you free information. Thank you for the lecture. I'm spreading some seeds all over the van. We need the black sacks. There's no black sacks. We are experimenting two different types of seed mixes. So the idea is one seed mix is for erosion control. So we selected species that germinate really fast and they create like a really good ground cover. So that they establish as fast as possible and they like keep the soil sticky. So that there's no erosion. Oh also we put some species to improve the soil health and for example also nitrogen fixers. On the other mix we also try to find the species that are very fast growing. So that they can outcompete the acacia on like the sun and they sort of as I said suffocate and don't let the acacia grow more. But that's very experimental. We're doing some tests and yeah we'll see if we can find and see if this technique works. This is take four. Take four of the drone seeding. To say we've had a lot of problems. Where's the key? It was below your bottom. Oh ----. Take five. To say we've had a lot of problems with drone seeding is an understatement. Oh I started first time that time then. I'm doing it now. Yeah grab everything mate yeah. I've got the other battery. It lands, we cycle the battery, we cycle the seeds and then it takes off again. That battery then goes on charge. Takes seven to nine minutes to charge a single battery and these batteries are huge. And that's how we work. And as always our biggest friend Mr Fock has arrived. Every seed we drop by drone, every tree we plant by hand, it all adds up. It's not always glamorous and it's definitely not always easy. But this land is responding. It's becoming greener day by day. And that's enough to keep us going. Silveira is growing and you too can join the community. Become a patron now and help us reforest the mountain.