Questões de Concursos Verbos Verbs

Re-Planting a Forest, One Drone at a Time

That funny little buzz you hear in the forest may not just be the hum of summer insects. In the near future it could be a small fleet of drones, coming to replant and restore forests that have been stripped of trees by industrial-scale deforestation. It’s all part of an ambitious plan by BioCarbon Engineering, a U.K.-based startup on a global mission to battle widespread clear-cutting, which strips more than 26 billion trees off the planet each year. CEO Lauren Fletcher, who spent 20 years as an engineer with NASA, says the only way to fight industrial-scale deforestation is with industrial-scale reforestation. Their idea: plant 1 billion trees a year. The first targets are in South Africa and the Amazonian jungles, both of which have suffered from widespread forest eradication.

BioCarbon’s reforestation scheme is simple and efficient. Here’s a quick look at how it plans to deploy its drone fleet:

1 Do a 3-D aerial survey. First, drones are sent to fly over a potential planting zone, snapping photos that create 3-D maps of the area to be reforested. The number of drones will vary depending up on the size of the seeding.

2 Create a seeding plan. Once all that terrain data has been analyzed, it then generates a seeding pattern that best suits the terrain.

3 Load the seed pods. The drones, which are equipped with guidance and control software, carry pressurized canisters of seed pods with germinated seeds immersed in a nutrient-rich gel.

4 Hover and plant. Flying at a height of 1 or 2 meters, the drones follow the planting patterns, firing the biodegradable seed pods down to the ground. The pods break open upon impact, allowing the germinated seed a chance to take root.

5 Monitor growth. After planting, the drones do low-level flights to assess the health of the sprouts and saplings.

Such “precision forestry,” as BioCarbon calls it, is extremely efficient. A farmer might hand plant as many as 3,000 seeds a day; Fletcher says his drones can drop up to 36,000 seed pods daily, often in areas where a human can’t reach. Working with local ecologists, BioCarbon will use the drones to spread a variety of tree species, as well as microorganisms and fungi designed to improve the soil quality. “The central focus is ecosystem restoration,” Fletcher says.

On a planetary climatological scale, Morton notes that “tropical deforestation plays a big role in global climate cycles,” claiming the accelerated pace of cutting and burning of forests accounted for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the 1990s. Fletcher and his team want to help reverse that trend. “By planting at the scale we’re looking at,” he says, “we can make a real longterm impact. We hope to do a lot of good in the world.”

(Adapted from https://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/07/re-planting-forest-one-drone-time/. Access on 22/8/2017)

Village’s Amateur Archaeologists Find Lost Tudor Palace

1. When a group of amateur archaeologists set out to find the buried remains of a Tudor palace
2. in their Northamptonshire village five years ago, they knew the odds were against them. “Many
3. of us were brought up in the village, and you hear about this lost palace, and wonder whether
4. it’s a myth or real. So we just wanted to find it”, said Chris Close, the chair of the Collyweston
5. Historical and Preservation Society (Chaps) which made the discovery of the Palace of
6. Collyweston in a back garden this year. “But we’re a bunch of amateurs. We had no money, no
7. expertise, no plans, no artist impressions to go off, and nothing remaining of the palace. It was
8. naivety and just hard work that has led us to it”.
9. The site was found using geophysical surveys and ground-penetrating radar. Various
10. attempts had been made in the 1980s and 90s to find Collyweston Palace, the home of Henry
11. VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. However, without the advantage of modern technology,
12. none had succeeded. The palace was famous during the 15th century and several historic events
13. took place there. The pre-wedding celebrations of Margaret Tudor to James IV of Scotland in
14. 1503 took place in the palace, and Henry VIII is recorded as holding court there on 16 and 17
15. October 1541. By the mid-17th century, it had fallen into disrepair, and until the Chaps dig
16. uncovered the palace walls in March, there was very little remaining evidence of its existence.
17. “A number of things have only really come to light as we’ve done this project”, said Close.
18. “As you do more and more research, and various different records start to become unearthed,
19. we realized Collyweston had privy councils being run from here, which is of massive national
20. importance”. Historians from the University of York helped verify the group’s findings and identify
21. the palace through some uncovered stone moldings, and will work with Chaps on more
22. excavations to further reveal the structure and conserve it for the future.
23. The Chaps team, which comprises more than 80 members ranging from teenagers to people
24. in their 70s and 80s, first set out their plan to find the palace in March 2018, using “local folktales
25. and hearsay” to help refine their search area. They carried out geophysical surveys and used
26. ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to help reveal the location of the palace walls, before securing
27. permission from homeowners to excavate in gardens. “We’ve done it all on an absolute
28. shoestring”, said Close. “We’ve basically done an £80,000-£90,000 project for roughly £13,000.
29. For us, being a little society, to have achieved this with no money, or expertise, or plans, I think
30. it’s something that the whole society should be proud of”.

(Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/dec/06/tudor-collyweston-palace-northamptonshire-found-in-garden-by-amateur-archeologists - text especially adapted for this test).