Tag: Conservation

Earth Day Project 2021: An Autonomous Seed Planting Drone for Environmental Restoration

Back in 2014 I had just graduated from my environmental science degree and was eager to start a career in the environmental sector. I had more ideas than time back then, which is obvious from the notes that I was keeping. Fast forward to 2020, I had just completed my masters in sustainability studies, am looking for work, and there is a province wide lockdown. Despite languishing for most of the year, I figured with the time that the lockdown afforded me, I could try to create something epic. I dusted off my old notebooks, and decided this project was worth my time.

It has become increasingly clear that conservation is no longer enough when it comes to our current biodiversity crisis. We need active environmental restoration to solve the problems we are facing as a society. I wanted to create a tool that could scale to produce results for huge environmental restoration projects and be accessible for people and organizations for a reasonable cost.

Follow Stewards Notes on Bluesky

For the past 4 months I’ve put in hundreds of hours to produce the Aspen. Its a fully autonomous drone capable of quickly broadcasting seed across large areas. The broadcasting wheel is interchangeable allowing users to spread up to 2.5kg of various seed types including treated tree seed, tallgrass, wildflower, clover and anything else you can imagine! (Edit: The Hopper in the video is a small one for testing) The drone is controlled by a base station that uploads a flight plan to the drone. Once the drone is ready, it takes off and completes the flight plan fully autonomously, spreading seed as it goes. The base station is capable of controlling multiple drones simultaneously, opening up possibilities for multiple drones to work in tandem to cover a huge area for restoration projects.

Broadcasting seed is never going to replace planting trees directly, but there are several methods for treating seed to increase their success rate that I have been researching. The University of Alberta has created an interesting seed coating that seems to increase the success rate of tree seeds to as high as 70%. This is definitely something that I would like to experiment with, as it may also assist with even broadcasting of the seed.

There’s still testing to carry out, and some refining to complete the design, but it is a working prototype ready to be put to the test. Please watch the video and let me know what you think! If you or your organization would like to work together to test the drone out on your project or a portion of your project, please let me know and I’m sure we can come up with an arrangement!

Also, if you or your organization are looking for a talented employee capable of making huge projects like this a reality, please reach out and lets have a conversation!

Bonus FAQ: I don’t understand, but several people have all asked “how high does it go?” Lets just say, I’m not going to test it out, but in theory it could ascend at 2m/s for 20 minutes. That works out to about 2.4km in altitude. At that point it would crash to the ground, probably never to be seen again.

2021-04-21 Add Comment

Protected Peterborough?

Snippet of Protected Areas Map

Over the past several years I’ve been asked by several people, “how much of Peterborough is protected?” Its not a straightforward question to answer; between overlapping jurisdictions, policies and laws and the ways in which they are enforced the area of protection in the city limits changes. Recently Debbie Jenkins reached out to me with a proposal to produce a map that attempted to finally answer the question “How much of Peterborough is Protected?“

View The Map Here

I first needed to decide what I would consider as a “protected area” in Peterborough. There are several regulations that do not necessarily act as protections for ecological purposes, but have ecological implications. Meanwhile regulations such as the 120m setback for wetlands are technically required by legislation, but rarely adhered to. I decided to take a qualitative two tier approach to my assessment.

Tier 2 protections were generally identified as areas that have some degree of protection, yet are generally ignored, circumvented, or have limited significance. Examples:

  • 120m setback from Provincially Significant Wetlands although technically required by provinical legislation, are rarely enforced on new building developments.
  • Alterations to Shorelines and Watercourses Regulations technically prohibits construction within the regulated areas adjacent to wetlands and watercourses, although the conservation authority is generally willing and able to provide exceptions to this rule.

Tier 1 protections were identified as areas with significant hurdles to development, and in my experience are generally spared within development applications. Exceptions to these rules are rarely granted (not never granted). Examples:

  • Within 30m from Provinically Significant Wetlands I can only think of limited examples in the past decade where this limit has not been enforced.
  • Parks Canada Land this land is federally protected and I consider unlikely to be developed.
  • City Parks generally city parks are not developed within the city of Peterborough, in large part due to public outcry and what I consider to be “cultural” protections.

This map is far from perfect and includes several approximations, however it should paint an accurate picture of “protected areas” within the city of Peterborough. It will be interesting to see when the official plan is released how this map might change. Advocating for nature has been a huge part of how many of the protected areas in our city have gained and maintained their status, and I hope this map paints an excellent picture of how that work has pieced together.

2021-01-28 1 Comment