Susan Graham A new way to restore Earths biodiversity from the air TED
Every year, humans change
10 million hectares of land,
and not for the better.
Right now, there are more than two billion
hectares of degraded land
around the world.
We need to fix this fast,
and technology can help.
Restoration is an enormous,
complex challenge.
It cannot be done
by simply planting trees.
We need to bring native,
complex ecosystems back to life,
and it requires deep ecological expertise.
Until now, we have been limited
to poor facsimiles,
like vast plantations
of a single kind of tree.
But drones change that
by allowing us to gather data
and plant the right mix of vegetation
quickly, at enormous scales.
And machine-learning analysis
enables us to plan the planting
and then monitor our restoration work.
For example, in Australia,
we’re using drone-based planting
and ecology-trained AI
to restore thousands of hectares
of land mined for coal.
Not just planting trees,
but bringing back biodiverse,
complex ecosystems.
On a larger scale,
native forests here in Australia
have been decimated
by catastrophic bushfires
and land-clearing for agriculture.
This means diminished food sources
and safe habitats for koalas.
A new project would allow us to accelerate
the restoration of thousands
of hectares of koala forests
over the next few years.
With these combined technologies,
we’re able to scale up restoration
from a small island
to an entire continent.
We can return forests to land
where a mine used to be,
or recreate ecosystems
like the one we’re hoping to restore
on Lord Howe Island,
birthplace of one of the world’s
largest insects.
This unique island
is plagued by imported species,
where we’re helping to eradicate
the undesirable plants
to allow endemic species to thrive.
It’s not just billions of trees.
It’s restoring nature
in all its complexity and beauty.
Thank you.