Bombs away! - innovative concept of planting tree saplings via biodegradable plastic cones dropped by plane - Brief Article

Science World, March 23, 1998 by Maria L. Chang

What's the fastest way to plant a forest? Grab a plane and drop bombs. No, not the explosive kind, but a bomb even a mom could love--tree bombs!

Engineer Moshe Alamaro of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has come up with cone-shaped canisters made of biodegradable plastic. That means the plastic is naturally broken down by bacteria in soil and water--it doesn't harm the environment. Then Alamaro packs year-old tree saplings, water, and nutrients in the canisters.

Alamaro's bombs still haven't flown yet--he's trying to get funding for his project. But here's his scenario: When high-flying planes drop the bombs over hard-to-reach terrain like mountains, the cones hurtle to the ground, where their sharp points pierce the soil. Within a few days, the plastic canisters degrade and saplings spread their roots.

"It's a neat concept," says Frank Burch of the U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C. But trying to reseed bare mountains by plane is no picnic. Shortly after World War II, foresters attempted aerial reseeding in the U.S. But the project bombed. Mice and gophers gobbled up most seeds and their populations exploded. So most trees were nipped in the bud. Now one option is to coat tree seeds, with pesticide to repel hungry rodents.

Once saplings sprout into young trees, they're an environmental dream. Their roots hold on to the soil to keep it from eroding, or wearing away. They also soak up rain that might otherwise flood lowland areas.

Alamaro envisions his tree bombs waging an even larger environmental baffle. He wants to combat global warming. One of the major culprits is carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas" that traps heat in the atmosphere, raising the Earth's temperature. Trees readily absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through their leaves. They use the carbon along with hydrogen from water to make glucose sugar--their own tree food.

Experts estimate that a pine-tree forest twice the size of Alaska could offset the amount of carbon humans spew into the atmosphere.

Obviously, this is one case in which almost anyone would agree: Drop those bombs!

FAST FACT

A single plane could plant as many as 100,000 trees in one flight.

Between 1980 and 1965, rain forests were destroyed at a rate of 72 acres a minute!

Human activities--like burning gasoline and coal--emit 7 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year.