Drones Sierra Leone Reforestation Project

Drones Deployed within the Sierra Leone Reforestation Undertaking

By DRONELIFE Workers Author Ian M. Crosby

A Sierra Leone-based pilot venture has been arrange to make use of drone-based distant sensing and information administration applied sciences to confirm and monitor reforestation packages.

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Sierra Leone has misplaced greater than 30% of its tree cowl since 2000 and has little funds to create new forests. At COP26, the Authorities of Sierra Leone dedicated to planting 25 million timber on over 960,000 hectares by 2030.

“Our problem in Sierra Leone is to mitigate the already critical influence of local weather change with no strategy to cowl the prices. “It is an equation meaning we have to pioneer expertise to sequester carbon in a method that offers entry to finance,” mentioned Setting Minister Foday Jaward.

In collaboration with the Authorities of Sierra Leone, a non-profit group Crown Representatives and drone professional UAV Assistance companions with UK Aid‘S Frontier Technologies program to look at potential use instances of expertise that may encourage investor confidence within the community-based forest carbon market.

The pilot venture will happen in northeastern Sierra Leone, the place the group has partnered with the native conservation and group growth group. Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary (TCS). The venture will use new programmatic and technological approaches to assist sustainable reforestation, maintain native communities accountable for replanted forests, and leverage superior drone expertise for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV). Every tree planted will likely be geotagged and monitored by long-range drones, leading to a remotely accessible verification mechanism. This mechanism will resolve uncertainties concerning investments in rural Africa, the place visibility could also be troublesome resulting from sparse and costly monitoring.

“Confronted with a fragmented carbon offset market, it is a transformative expertise that may give us unprecedented entry to the success of reforestation efforts over time. Whereas the usage of distant sensing to find out land use shouldn’t be new, the flexibility to watch the situation of particular person timber will present extra correct information to quantify the anticipated quantity of carbon captured. Habiba Wurie, Crown Brokers Nation Director for Sierra Leone, will present stakeholders and traders with real-time reporting on achievements, cost standards and required operations and upkeep to take care of forest well being.”

“We see the mixing of proprietary drone expertise and information fusion offering an answer to the reforestation verification and monitoring challenges, with the potential to unlock large-scale funding in reforestation initiatives,” mentioned Daniel Ronen, co-founder of UAVaid. “We stay up for working with UKAid, Crown Brokers and TCS on this groundbreaking initiative to work to supply a mechanism for sustainable funding in rural Africa that may assist international internet zero and COP targets whereas offering livelihoods. ”

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Ian attended the Dominican College of California the place he earned a BA in English in 2019. With a lifelong ardour for writing and storytelling and a powerful curiosity in expertise, he now contributes to DroneLife as a workers author.

Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, an expert drone companies market, and is a fascinated observer of the rising drone trade and the regulatory panorama for drones. Miriam has authored greater than 3,000 articles specializing in the business drone house and is a global speaker and trade acknowledged title. Miriam has a level from the College of Chicago and over 20 years of expertise in high-tech gross sales and advertising and marketing for brand new applied sciences.
E mail Miriam for drone trade consulting or writing.

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