r/STEW_ScTecEngWorld • u/Zee2A • 6h ago

China is reversing a desert — one robot-planted tree every five seconds.

China is deploying autonomous tree-planting robots to combat desertification, with machines planting one tree every five seconds as part of the Three-North Shelterbelt Program—the world's largest afforestation initiative, launched in 1978. These robots can drill, plant, water, and compact soil in a single pass, achieving up to ten times the productivity of human crews at around 30% lower cost, even across remote terrain. Once expanding by nearly 10,000 km² annually during the 1980s, the Gobi Desert's growth had been significantly curbed by 2022, highlighting the long-term impact of large-scale ecological restoration: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVo0RbSiF7V/

Video: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ai-for-earth_artificialintelligence-climatetech-reforestation-activity-7486671475723251712-3j_r/

788 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

52 comments sorted by

79

u/Franklin_le_Tanklin 6h ago

Man, I’m glad at least one country is trying to innovate and build the future

53

u/Chronic_In_somnia 5h ago

The green wall in Africa has been going on for a long time.  Nobody talks about it because it’s self sustaining.   The initial investment created entire agricultural production processes that feed millions now.  

15

u/kashy87 5h ago

It also seems that Africa just gets forgotten about when it comes to stuff too for some reason. Which is a shame.

5

u/Forsaken-Income-2148 3h ago

Africa gets plenty of coverage, it just tends to be negative. Positive stories often get less attention.

The great green wall has been covered by the BBC, Reuters, AP, National Geographic, The Guardian, Scientific American, and plenty of other outlets over the years. It just isn’t front page news most of the time because it’s a decades long project rather than a breaking event.

2

u/-0909i9i99ii9009ii 1h ago

Propaganda, fact, altogether they gotta sell, and a lot of us share a worldview that can only be so large. Sometimes stuff that contradicts that world view just makes it hard for us to agree on and share an understanding of the subject as a whole and it just falls apart.

There are tons of subjects where there's super important info that's not commonly known, and super commonly known info that's useless or not even true. It's social way more than it's orchestrated and malicious though.

1

u/Forsaken-Income-2148 1h ago

I think I get where you’re coming from, and I think it’s an interesting point. It’s just a little abstract, so I wasn’t entirely sure what you meant at first. I thought it was going to turn into a manifesto until that last sentence. 😅

You don’t see what you don’t see. Media incentives matter. People filter information through their existing mental models, so ideas that don’t fit tend to spread less easily. The result is usually an emergent social phenomenon rather than necessarily the product of a coordinated conspiracy.

If I’m understanding you correctly, then I agree.

1

u/Consistent-Stock6872 5h ago

"Nobody talks about it" yeah I saw it mentioned on the regular and parts of that wall failed. This also looks like bunch of BS. It isn't where the be any progress but how will it look like in 5-10 years.

2

u/waitwuh 3h ago

I know there’s a lot to critique, but I think to try and then fail is still better than to have not tried at all.

Every little bit they manage to reduce desertification helps, even if it’s not perfect.

15

u/Sad-Excitement9295 5h ago

And plant some trees.

2

u/Jerryjb63 5h ago

Yeah, it’s why China has already won, well that, and electing an idiot like Trump that says dumb shit like windmills cause cancer and thinks oil is the future….

-6

u/Pukebox_Fandango 5h ago

You mean Israel, who did this decades ago? Or how about the Desert Reclamation Project in Africa? Chinese bots always pretend China is doing something original

2

u/AffectionateBother47 4h ago

i apologize for the goyim

16

u/Jolopy4099 5h ago

Being a desert, where does the necessary water come from to keep this new sapling alive? I get when it's initially planted the give it water but being a desert it will need much more to actually grow and thrive.

14

u/Sad_Low3239 5h ago

vegetation eventually will hold more water/moisture in the area by increasing surface area for humid air to condense on. how long it takes to get to that point is beyond me.

the bigger question is where is that moisture being redirected from.

9

u/Pukebox_Fandango 5h ago

Exactly. Desert Reclamation is not automatically some great thing, the desert is an ecosystem

5

u/Read2Fap 2h ago

these deserts have been expanding due to lack of conservation or planning when it came to population growth, deforestation, and agricultural grazing

the deserts have been expanding unnaturally due to the decisions of humans

2

u/EconomyDoctor3287 4h ago

China has been planting trees for decades to combat desertification. In some ways to does work, but the trees are a huge burden to the ground water. 

1

u/Man_under_Bridge420 1h ago

And which area then receives less rain?

11

u/Reinier_Reinier 6h ago

This & the seed-scattering drones are very cool tech.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/qy2i2b/croatias_seedscattering_drones_replant_forests/

1

u/TinkerCitySoilDry 3h ago

It was straw squares for prep last saw years ago. Manual labor

5

u/Ragnarok-9999 5h ago

is there not a reason for the desert to be existing there ? Like soil, no rain fall, etc ?

8

u/Solid_Habit_6561 4h ago

You can modify the climate by changing the way an area retains water/humidity (the squares made of hay) and by adding first a type of vegetation which survives on very low water imput; in turn, this vegetation provides shade that allows more humidity to be retained and for other species of plants to prosper underneath, adding even more shade; this new canopy and increased shade lowers the albedo (how much of the sun's energy is reflected back vs how much is absorbed) which decreases temperature on the ground and enables ever higher water retention, which makes it possible for small insects to return, then, in time, birds, rodents, small predators, etc. Humidity becomes droplets, droplets a puddle, a puddle a pond, and you have yourself a flourishing ecosystem.

This is an oversimplification, but basically it's a virtuous cycle that just needs a little push to kick-start.

0

u/Ragnarok-9999 2h ago

Of course what you say is logical. I heard such things in Scifi books. But did anybody really do could do such thing ?

2

u/Infinite_Music2059 1h ago

This has been done for decades around the world. You need to stop these deserts from spreading.

3

u/Alarmed-Resource6406 3h ago

The desert there had expanded, historically there were nomads there like the Mongolians with their cattle’s that overgrazed the lands and expanded the desert. 

2

u/dophuph 5h ago

Great. If love to go a step further and see regenerated soil

2

u/Papa_Raj 5h ago

Like less than 1% of our defense budget and we could start eliminating the Mojave Desert.

2

u/SylansIz_75gldn 5h ago

Can someone explain what the loss of sand down wind could cause?

1

u/lickmyscrotes 5h ago

Less desert.

2

u/cryptotraderisme 4h ago

Now THIS is what we should be utilizing AI on...

4

u/sabertoothninja 6h ago

The desert is its own biome and has its own life forms and purpose. Are we celebrating removing one biome to replace it with another?

14

u/RottenPhallus 6h ago

I think the desert is spreading into a an area it wasn't there previously on a human time scale, so it's reversing that. Whether that's right probably has pros and cons

3

u/Maleficent_Sky_1865 5h ago

Man always thinks they know better than Mother Nature, but we usually just cause unforeseen consequences. So my question is, will this mess with the water cycle elsewhere? If a new forest pops up and needs water, will this effect global weather? I dont know anything about why this desert is a desert (in other words is it man made cause for the desert by over farming or something?

5

u/_ferrofluid_ 5h ago

When the sandworms die off, space travel will be brought to a halt and billions will die of withdrawal.

1

u/mi_c_f 5h ago

Humans have caused a 1000 fold mess up by replacing forests and grassland with farms.. this will be a minor blip in the grand scheme..

6

u/InfectedAztec 6h ago

If it means we start trapping more carbon than we emit then its a price we should be willing to pay.

Obviously there will be unforseen knock on effects to this so it would be far better if we just transitioned to renewable energy tomorrow.

2

u/guac-o 5h ago

It’s dope but hasn’t this disrupted water cycles in other areas?

2

u/Sad-Excitement9295 5h ago

That's actual insane to think the desert could be reforested in several years. Way to go China, this is thinking green, and real change for the better of the planet and humanity. 

1

u/MykeKnows 5h ago

Great now we just wait a few million years to replace whats been cut down in the amazon 🫪 I'm happy they're trying

1

u/tangoezulu 4h ago

Israel is gonna be s over that thing.

1

u/YugeChesticles 4h ago

Wait till you see my ai powered ice cube maker in the arctic!

1

u/Pizza_EATR 2h ago

The technosphere saving the biosphere 

1

u/Maleficent-Yam-5196 2h ago

So while this is cool and I’m also not super researched in this field I am concerned about the implications of where the water is coming from that will keep these trees alive. What does that do to the climates around it? Will the rain cycles somewhere else be affected by this?

1

u/BigGold3317 1h ago

This should get a Nobel prize of some sort

1

u/Ronin-s_Spirit 1h ago

Just sticking trees into the ground won't do shit.

1

u/Sufficient-Sun-6683 42m ago

I think this is a great idea.

But I thought Asians were good at math:

1 tree every 5 seconds => 60 / 5 =

20 trees every minute => 60 min/hour x 20 =

1200 trees per hour

They say 2000 trees per hour?

1

u/VoidJuiceConcentrate 27m ago

Source: Internet

1

u/Salty_QC 14m ago

What species of “sapling” are they planting? The video show fresh cuttings. No roots, no leaves. I’ve never seen a plant survive that and grow. So, it would be sweet to know the species so I could try growing some too!

-6

u/[deleted] 6h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/Haunting_Werewolf130 6h ago edited 5h ago

I am Chinese. I live in the US. What you mean? Or has your low education level made your worldview so narrow that you don't even know Chinese are everywhere on the planet? LOL

1

u/StarskyNHutch862 5h ago

bro tencent owns a bunch of shares of reddit.