Drones Deployed in Sierra Leone Reforestation Mission
by DRONELIFE Employees Author Ian M. Crosby
A Sierra Leone-based pilot venture is about to make the most of drone-based distant sensing and information administration applied sciences for the verification and monitoring of reforestation packages.
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Sierra Leone has misplaced over 30% of its tree cowl since 2000, and has little in methods of funds with which to create new forests. At COP26, the Authorities of Sierra Leone dedicated to planting 25 million timber by 2030 over 960,000 HA.
“Our problem in Sierra Leone is mitigating the already extreme influence of local weather change, with no technique of protecting the prices. It’s an equation meaning we have to pioneer expertise that may sequester carbon in ways in which entry finance,” stated Atmosphere Minister Foday Jaward.
In collaboration with the Authorities of Sierra Leone, not-for-profit group Crown Brokers and drone specialist UAVaid are partnering with UK Help’s Frontier Applied sciences program to look at potential use instances for expertise that may encourage confidence from traders within the community-based forest carbon market.
The pilot venture will happen in north-eastern Sierra Leone, the place the group has partnered with native conservation and neighborhood growth group Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary (TCS). The venture will make the most of new programmatic and technological approaches to assist sustainable reforestation, put native communities in control of the replanted forests, and leverage superior drone expertise for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV). Every particular person planted tree can be geo-tagged and monitored by lengthy vary drones, leading to a remotely accessible verification mechanism. This mechanism will assuage uncertainties surrounding investments in rural Africa, the place visibility might be troublesome resulting from rare and costly monitoring.
“Confronted with a fragmented carbon-offset market, this can be a transformative expertise that may give us unprecedented entry to the success of reforestation efforts over time. Whereas use of distant sensing to find out land use isn’t new, the power to trace the standing of particular person timber will present extra correct information to quantify the anticipated quantity of carbon captured. It should present stakeholders and traders with actual time reporting on successes, fee benchmarks, and required operations and upkeep to maintain forest well being,” stated Habiba Wurie, Nation Director for Crown Brokers in Sierra Leone.
“We see the mixing of specialized drone expertise and information fusion offering an answer to the challenges of reforestation verification and monitoring, with the potential to unlock giant scale funding in replanting initiatives,” stated UAVaid co-founder Daniel Ronen. “In partnering with UKAid, Crown Brokers and TCS on this ground-breaking initiative, we look ahead to working to ship a mechanism for sustainable funding into areas of rural Africa which is able to present livelihoods in addition to supporting world net-zero and COP objectives.”
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Ian attended Dominican College of California, the place he acquired a BA in English in 2019. With a lifelong ardour for writing and storytelling and a eager curiosity in expertise, he’s now contributing to DroneLife as a employees author.
Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, knowledgeable drone providers market, and a fascinated observer of the rising drone business and the regulatory surroundings for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles centered on the business drone house and is a global speaker and acknowledged determine within the business. Miriam has a level from the College of Chicago and over 20 years of expertise in excessive tech gross sales and advertising for brand spanking new applied sciences.
For drone business consulting or writing, E mail Miriam.
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