Covering The Earth With Trees
By James Donahue
It was about two decades ago that former UK Royal Air Force pilot Jack Walters envisioned using the C-130s, which were equipped to drop land mines, to do mass aerial plantings of trees instead. Walters published his idea in a paper while at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
It took awhile but the idea was seriously explored by Lockheed Martin teaming up with Aerial Forestation Inc. of Newton, Massachusetts. They envisioned restoring a fleet of decommissioned C-130 Hercules cargo planes for use in deforesting the world.
Moshe Alamaro, a representative of Aerial Forestation, was excited about the idea when he was in contact with Walters. "It was a great idea," he said. Walters tested his idea, which involved placing seedlings in small metallic containers filled with rich soil and water, and designed to burrow into the ground on impact.
When they tried the seedling drop they found the idea worked, but the seedlings had to be dropped in containers that held together on impact. They found that with metal that biodegrades after it hits the soil, it was possible to plant thousands of trees on a single flight.
While the plan is being explored by both Lockheed Martin and Aerial Forestation Inc., it needed sponsors to bring it to fruition. Lockheed hoped to market the idea to companies wishing to offset large carbon footprints, like coal burning industrial firms.
A report in Treehugger noted that there were about 2,500 decommissioned C-130’s parked in 70 different countries that could easily be put to use as foresters. A single plane can be outfitted to drop up to 900,000 trees in a single day.
Lockheed’s Peter Simmons said: "The possibilities are amazing. We can fly at 1,000 feet at 130 knots planning more than 3,000 cones a minute in a pattern across the landscape – just as we did with landmines, but in this case each cone contains a sapling. That’s 125,000 trees for each sortie and 900,000 trees in a day."
They determined that it would be possible to turn the Earth green again within the next few years. All those trees would go a long way toward reducing the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere and restoring the oxygen levels that is to vital to living creatures, including mankind.
But the project was never accomplished. They couldn’t solve problems of soil preparation, tree selection and the human physical work involved in collecting, preparing and putting hundreds of thousands of tiny seedlings in pods into the waiting aircraft. It would have taken thousands of dedicated volunteers to accomplish all of the labor.
By James Donahue
It was about two decades ago that former UK Royal Air Force pilot Jack Walters envisioned using the C-130s, which were equipped to drop land mines, to do mass aerial plantings of trees instead. Walters published his idea in a paper while at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
It took awhile but the idea was seriously explored by Lockheed Martin teaming up with Aerial Forestation Inc. of Newton, Massachusetts. They envisioned restoring a fleet of decommissioned C-130 Hercules cargo planes for use in deforesting the world.
Moshe Alamaro, a representative of Aerial Forestation, was excited about the idea when he was in contact with Walters. "It was a great idea," he said. Walters tested his idea, which involved placing seedlings in small metallic containers filled with rich soil and water, and designed to burrow into the ground on impact.
When they tried the seedling drop they found the idea worked, but the seedlings had to be dropped in containers that held together on impact. They found that with metal that biodegrades after it hits the soil, it was possible to plant thousands of trees on a single flight.
While the plan is being explored by both Lockheed Martin and Aerial Forestation Inc., it needed sponsors to bring it to fruition. Lockheed hoped to market the idea to companies wishing to offset large carbon footprints, like coal burning industrial firms.
A report in Treehugger noted that there were about 2,500 decommissioned C-130’s parked in 70 different countries that could easily be put to use as foresters. A single plane can be outfitted to drop up to 900,000 trees in a single day.
Lockheed’s Peter Simmons said: "The possibilities are amazing. We can fly at 1,000 feet at 130 knots planning more than 3,000 cones a minute in a pattern across the landscape – just as we did with landmines, but in this case each cone contains a sapling. That’s 125,000 trees for each sortie and 900,000 trees in a day."
They determined that it would be possible to turn the Earth green again within the next few years. All those trees would go a long way toward reducing the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere and restoring the oxygen levels that is to vital to living creatures, including mankind.
But the project was never accomplished. They couldn’t solve problems of soil preparation, tree selection and the human physical work involved in collecting, preparing and putting hundreds of thousands of tiny seedlings in pods into the waiting aircraft. It would have taken thousands of dedicated volunteers to accomplish all of the labor.