Extended Literature Review

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General

In this section a more in depth literature review on the specific subject of reforestation after forest fires is done to assess whether or not a robot is a desirable artifact to be created for such a purpose. Several aspects are investigated including but not limited to biodiversity, need for controlled seeding, effectiveness of current and the costs of current methods. The general literature review concerning itself with the possibilities of robotics technology and the contemporary issues involving reforestation can be found in General Literature Review. General information about the project can be found at PRE2017 4 Groep6.

Biodiversity & Need for Control in National Parks

National Parks are located in most countries spread all over the world. In only the United States, the 59 acknowledged before 2018 span well over 400 thousand squared kilometer (Sawe, B.E. 2017). [1] Even though National Parks are most commonly known as a touristic attraction, the reason they have originally been established is ‘’to conserve the scenery, natural and cultural resources, and other values of the park in a way that will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.’’ (The NPS Organic Act 1916) [2] Meaning that, only taking the natural factors into account, the National Parks have to keep the wildlife as intact as possible. Thereby protecting it not only from human influences, but also from certain natural ones. For the later natural phenomena like typhoons, droughts, floods and fires are good examples. Even though these phenomena are considered things that happen every once in a while and which are part of nature, their effect on a National Park is usually catastrophic. Usually, after one of these events, big parts of the park are destroyed entirely, meaning that the wildlife needs to recover. This paper will be limited to the phenomena of a forest fire originated by natural causes and the recovery of the National Park afterwards. In order to recover a National Parks ‘natural scenery’, a clear definition of this must first be found. The natural scenery can be divided into three categories, being animals, plants and non-living elements. This latter category spans the general topography of the Park, for example rivers, lakes and mountains. Together these three categories form what is commonly known as an ecosystem. Which is a term describing the relation between organisms and the physical environment they live in. Therefore, to conserve the natural scenery can also be reformulated into conserving the current ecosystem. As the non-living elements are usually not influenced as heavily as the other two categories, they are from now on ignored in this analysis of the recovery of the National Park. Another concept linked to the conservation of nature is biodiversity. Biodiversity is the variability among living organisms from all sources, within and between species. The degree of biodiversity shapes the ecosystem, if there are many different species living in the park, they interact in another way with each other and their physical environment than when there are only a few different species living there. This shows that the biodiversity has a vital importance on the ecosystem, and that a change in the parks biodiversity will result in a change in its ecosystem. (Greenfacts, 2018) [3] The heavy dependence from natural scenery on the ecosystem and from the ecosystem on the biodiversity states that for a National Park to conserve its natural scenery, at least the biodiversity cannot change by any significant factor. It is, however, not claimed that this is enough for a park to conserve the natural scenery. It could be argued that other factors, like noise or horizon pollution mean that the natural scenery is not conserved, but this is not discussed in this paper. Only the contribution of the biodiversity is taken into account. Coming back to the recovery after a natural catastrophe, to say that a forest fire has a significant effect on the parks biodiversity is an understatement. Depending on the fire’s size, temperature and the speed at which it spreads it will destroy big parts of the park and all wildlife within the area. In order to get the park back to its original level of biodiversity a certain degree of control is needed, as the original ratios of species should be established once again. Regaining this biodiversity is divided in both the animal and plant life, and can be done in multiple ways. This paper will be limited to the methods of regrowing the plant life, to be called reforestation. In order for reforestation to be effective, it needs to give all species a fair chance to return to their original population. This also needs to take into account the species specific growth preferences, meaning factors such as temperature, nutrition, amount of freedom and exposure to sunlight. All these factors are heavily dependent on the plants location, and thus on the location where the initial seed starts to sprout after the fire. Thus, the location of the seeds is of vital importance for reforestation. The three currently most used are aerial, manual and natural reforestation. These three will be discussed below.


Current methods of reforestation

Natural Reforestation

One method of reforestation is natural reforestation. Natural reforestation relies on nature to return an area to forestland after the area is deforested, this returning of trees can happen through seeds that are carried by the wind, transported or buried by animals or that are dropped by mature trees[4]. This already leads to the first constraint of natural reforestation; there must be enough living trees and animals around to enable natural reforestation. If there are no trees in the entire environment, there is no possibility that seeds can be dropped on the area. However, this study is concerned about returning an forest after a forest fire in a National park, in most cases the fire is eliminated after a while due to human interference and this results in enough living trees left to drop seeds.

In contrast to artificial deforestation, natural reforestation happens without the help of humans or machines. Because natural reforestation happens without the interference of humans, there is absolutely no control in natural reforestation. This means that the most dominant species, or the species that have not been destroyed by the fire, will regrow on the devastated area and other species that were also located at this area but are all destroyed by the fire or take much longer to regrow will vanish from the National park since they cannot spread their seeds anymore. As is stated in the introduction from this wiki page. In order to rehabilitate the Natural park the biodiversity must stay in its original state as much as possible. This may happen with natural reforestation when the National park only consisted of one species. However, when the National park consisted of many different species, which is often the case to create a nice scenery, natural reforestation provides no control and thus no guarantee that the old ratio of species will regrow. It can be said that the natural reforestation will always be good since the nature can do what she wants, this is however not the case in a National park. Some species will always be dominant over other species, think about weeds in your own backyard. These dominant species are however not the (only) species you want to have in a National park. In order to recreate the original ratios of species in the National park, some level of control is needed which cannot be created with natural reforestation.

The benefit of natural reforestation is that the costs are extremely low. Because natural reforestation happens without the interference of humans, technology or other materials, there is also no money invested in the reforestation.

In the introduction it is also stated that in order to achieve the preferred ratios of species, the different seeds need to be planted at different depths in the soil. It can speak for itself that this cannot be achieved with natural reforestation. Because most natural reforestation happens with seeds that are dropped by mature trees, these seeds will all end up on the ground and none will be buried. The level of control that is thus needed to recreate a National park cannot be obtained with natural reforestation.

Another source confirms this conclusion and states that only 7.9% of reforestation is done with natural reforestation. This number is so low because where natural methods of natural regeneration fail or are unrealistic, artificial planting ensures the attainment of the main goal - sustainability of forest ecosystems. [5].

Artificial reforestation has certain important benefits why it is often preferred over natural reforestation. It provides better control over tree spacing, more control over the species present in the new forest, the opportunity to plant genetically improved seeds or seedlings, and a higher rate of tree survival[6]. It can be summarized that when using artificial reforestation, the reforestation can be better managed than with natural reforestation. This is what is necessary to recreate the National park as is stated in the introduction. [7]. Two main methods of artificial reforestation are manual reforestation and aerial reforestation. These two methods will now be discussed.


Manual reforestation

Manual reforestation is the oldest and most well-known method of replanting areas devastated by wildfires and in general. However, manual reforestation is also a very slow method. It requires a lot of workforce and costs can go up quickly. It is estimated that manual reforestation can cost up to 62,000 USD[8] for the initial replanting only in a 1 by 1 km area. Maintenance is also required in the following years to make sure the forest grows as it is expected to be. This can cost up to 120,000 USD[8] in the first 2 years only. This is a significant investment for national parks or other involved parties and other methods might be more cost efficient. More than 182,000 USD has to be spent on workforce and material. This is by far the most expensive and most labour intensive method and therefore not the most wanted solution.

This method of reforestation also poses significant health risks[9] to the workforce. Our focus lies on wildfires in national parks, there are high pollution rates for soil, air and water in these areas. Ashes and toxic residues are often found in these in and near the devastated areas. There is an increase in mortality rate and a symptomes related to the lungs occur at a significant higher rate[9] . This is perhaps the most important factor when deciding which method is to be used to replant an area after a wildfire.

Manual reforestation also has some benefits over the other primary replanting methods. This methods is more precise compared to the other methods. Seeds can be planted at a more optimal depth[10] and invasive and other unwanted species can be easily removed by the workforce on-site. This means that the destroyed forest can be changed to a more healthy ecosystem by having the workforce suppress and promote certain species. The germination rate is therefore also relatively high[10] compared to the other primary replanting methods. However, this rate also depends on other factors like seed quality and differs per species. Seeds are also less prone to animals that use them as food, they are planted directly into the ground and are not easily accessible by animals. Seedlings and young trees can also be planted instead of seeds only to kickstart the growth of the forest. This method bypasses danger of the seed just lying on the ground. However, seedlings and saplings more expensive and are harder than seeds to move on-site. Recent advancements in seed quality also makes a seeds only method more beneficial, both in terms of costs and survival rate.

Manual reforestation is also already augmented by utilising machines, by preparing the ground beforehand by means of subsoiling[10] , machines can increase the growth rate and survival rate of the seeds. Subsoiling also provides the option place the seeds even deeper into the ground, which can be beneficial for certain species. However, planting is still a labour intensive practice and these large machines for subsoiling, often used in agriculture, can not be used in all areas in national parks. Without machines, manual reforestation can still reach hill and mountain like areas that are normally not easily accessible for large machines

A small robot could significantly decrease overall costs while still being able to a reach difficult areas. There are also no extra health risks for the human workforce, since they can perform their function off-site. If high precision can be achieved without a significant loss of speed and a high germination rate, then small robot might provide an elegant, cheap and fast solution to the given problem.


Aerial reforestation

Aerial seeding is perhaps the most novel method for reforestation among the other options, which have generally existed for many centuries. Its main premise is a reduction in labour, as seeds can be sown at a much higher rate than manual seeding could ever produce and time-effectiveness, as an airplane can easily cover an area of several hectares at a much quicker rate than manual seeding using volunteers. However the question remains if this method is truly beneficial in case of actual saplings it produces and the costs it inherently carries, considering an aircraft of several metric tons needs to be lifted in the air burning kerosine and enormous amounts of seeds are spread. Contrary to intuitive belief aerial seeding is in most cases not a standalone method, in order to be effective more often than not some preliminary ground work is required to prepare the area to be seeded (in terms of boosting the receptiveness of the ground to the dropped seeds) (Régnière, 1982) [11]. A very crude probabilistic model, taking into account two classes of possible areas (highly receptive due to site preparation or natural levels) and a constant occupation of highly receptive area per unit of area exists [11], which reveals that higher seeding rates do in general lead to more saplings, however the relation is only linear in the case of pure natural occupation. If the site is prepared and occupation rates become higher, the relation between the number of saplings per unit approaches more or less rooted relationships. This model further reveals that the variance of the pattern in saplings per unit area severely depend on the width between airplane runs, with lowest variance only occurring at 1 meter distances. However, for each and every combination of width between airplane runs and seeding density a minimum in variance exists to create an optimal balance between the two. Using a purely random (obtained by uniform seeding density created by narrow spacing) seed distribution as a measure for maximum obtainable sapling rate, it was found that the efficiency of a real process with a limited spacing decreases rapidly as the spacing becomes larger, although there is a compensating effect for higher seeding rates, albeit the amplitude of this compensation is much smaller than the amplitude of the decrease in efficiency at wider spacing. Very counterintuitive, for equal spacing between the airplane runs, the efficiency of the process first drops to a minimum of 88% after which it slowly increases for larger seeding drop densities, meaning that more does not necessarily mean better, unless ridiculous amounts of seeds are used.

Furthermore, a second study in China comparing growth rates and carbon stock levels (equivalent for biomass) of both aerial seeded forests and naturally regenerated forests showed differences effectiveness between the two methods, with aerially seeded forests needing longer time to completely develop and hence always following behind naturally regenerated forests (Xiao et al., 2015) [12]. This study was performed using the same tree species in previously highly naturally degraded areas. In the early years (10-20 years) of the new forests the naturally regenerated forests seem to do better in terms of overall carbon stock, with an eventual conversion of the carbon stock values for the aerially seeded forest to carbon stock values of the naturally regrown forests for elder forests (50+ years). This faster growth rate of naturally regenerated forests is most likely caused by the self-capacity of natural forests to sustain themselves, which can only kick in at a later stage for an artificially planted forest by means of aerial seeding and by a higher occupation of carbon stock of the forest floor litter layer in the natural forests which provide many nutrients for trees. Thus overall, aerially seeded forests will eventually over time reach a state where the difference in their carbon stock is no longer statistically significant, however this approach in carbon stock is always from below.

Hence taking into account the findings of both Régnière [11] and Xiao et al. [12] it is safe to conclude that aerial seeding can possibly be an effective method for reforestation, however it is largely context dependent on the problem. Considering one needs a pre-prepared area to increase survivability of seeds and the airplane needs to make very tightly spaced runs to create a somewhat universally spread forest, the process becomes very time intensive in execution, whereas the main appeal of aerial seeding would be the simplicity in saving time as compared to manual seeding. In situation where natural deposits of seeds are scarce, aerial seeding would be an optimal solution, since it simply would take nature too long to naturally recover the forest, even though the growth rate of natural forests are higher. However, considering we are dealing with forests fires this last situation is not very likely, as most often due to human intervention forests do not completely vanish due to wildfires, rendering plenty of natural seed deposit left. In terms of control aerial seeding gives little opportunities unless one chooses to specifically seed only one species of plant, as for any other desired degree of control a mixture of seeds has to be spread, for which different survival rates exists. Albeit, if one desires empty patches of land in the forest this could be done by severely increasing the spacing of airplane runs. In terms of biodiversity a similar conclusion can be drawn. Some level of biodiversity can be reached by mixing seeds from differents trees and plants together for the airplane to drop, however this increases the difficulty of pre-preparing the site for different types of trees/plants to coexist together as each seed will have a different optimal depth and nutritional needs, whereas such an situation would also eventually be reached by nature. In terms of costs however, a study of the Society of American Foresters conducted in 1948 revealed that the costs of aerial seeding would be $7.25 per hectare (Westveld, 1949) [13], so taking into account inflation this would yield a cost of $75.39 [14]. More recent sources report a cost of $60 per hectare for aerial seeding process only, with a whopping $630 per hectare if site preparations are taken into account as well [15]. The discrepancy between the values obtained by means of inflation and the more recent value is most likely caused by technological improvements making the process cheaper and more efficient, thus countering the inflation. A popular novel alternative method for aerial seeding is by the employment of drones. Although this technique has a lot of potential, in its current state it is rather limited; communication technologies only allow a maximum distance of a couple of hundred meters for commands to be received by the drone (Fortes, 2017) [16], and even if the drones are build to be autonomous to overcome this distance limitation due to communication problems, they are still severely limited by their battery capacity which usually allows operation for somewhere between 30-90 minutes [17] (Köln, 2015) [18]

All in all it can thus be concluded that in the case of a forest fire a robot can certainly be a proper solution as it gives a decent level of control if the resolution of the actuators is big enough and will certainly be an incentive for National Parks to switch to this novel technology if it can operate at a cost of less than $630 per hectare.

Bibliography

  1. ↑ Sawe Benjamin Elisha (2017) How many national parks are there in the United States, World Atlas, retrieved from: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-many-national-parks-are-there-in-the-united-states.html
  2. ↑ National Park Service (1916) the NPS Organic Act Retrieved From: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/air/npsresponsibilities.htm
  3. ↑ Greenfacts (2018) Biodiversity and Human Well-being retrieved from: https://www.greenfacts.org/en/biodiversity/l-3/1-define-biodiversity.htm
  4. ↑ North Carolina Forestry Association. (2017, February). Forest Management Basics. Opgehaald van North Carolina Forestry: https://www.ncforestry.org/teachers/forest-management-basics/
  5. ↑ Jan Lukaszewicz, W. K. (2002). THE ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL REGENERATION IN INCREASING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF FOREST ECOSYSTEMS IN POLAND.
  6. ↑ North Carolina Forestry Association. (2017, February). Forest Management Basics. Opgehaald van North Carolina Forestry: https://www.ncforestry.org/teachers/forest-management-basics/
  7. ↑ nrs fs fed. (2014). Reforestation
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Vera Lex Engel, John A. Parrotta, An evaluation of direct seeding for reforestation of degraded lands in central São Paulo State, Brazil, 2001, https://www.fs.fed.us/research/publications/misc/78142-2001-Foreco-Engel-Parrotta.pdf
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Sarah Elise Finlay, Andrew Moffat, Rob Gazzard, David Baker, and Virginia Murray, Health Impacts of Wildfires, 2012, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3492003/
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Thomas A. Waldrop, Proceedings of the Ninth Biennial Southern Silvicultural / Research Conference, Clemson, 1998, https://www.srs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_srs020.pdf#page=282
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Régnière, J. (1982). A probabilistic model relating stocking to degree of scarification and aerial seeding rate. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 12(2), 362-367.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Xiao, X., Wei, X., Liu, Y., Ouyang, X., Li, Q., & Ning, J. (2015). Aerial seeding: an effective forest restoration method in highly degraded forest landscapes of sub-tropic regions. Forests, 6(6), 1748-1762.
  13. ↑ Westveld, M. (1949). Airplane seeding: A new venture in reforestation. Unasylva, 3(3), 95-99.
  14. ↑ https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm, retrieved at 16-05-2018
  15. ↑ www.silviculturemagazine.com/sites/default/files/sites/silviculturemagazine.com/files/issues/2011062307/spring2005.pdf, retrieved at 16-05-2018
  16. ↑ Fortes, E. P. (2017). Seed Plant Drone for Reforestation. The Graduate Review, 2(1), 13-26.
  17. ↑ https://newatlas.com/tree-planting-drones-droneseed/45259/, retrieved at 17-05-2018
  18. ↑ KÖLN, T. Forest Monitoring with Drones: Application Strategies for Protected Riverine Forest Ecosystems in the Atlantic Forest of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Doctoral dissertation, UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES).
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