INTERNATIONAL
Aerial Pine Seeding by Helicopter by Wes Kay, Aerial Spray Manager, Expedition Helicopters Fashor Yu, AgNav, Inc. / Lai Nguyen, P.Eng., AgNav, Inc.
An Expeditions Helicopter’s ship with Isolair tanks and AgNav granular flow controller for pine seeding.
A 24 | agairupdate.com
With catastrophic wildfires happening in many places in the world, forest protection and reforestation are big concerns for countries that have wet and dry weather that varies, such as the United States, Canada and Australia. This year millions of hectares of wildlands and forests were burned. People lost homes and even their lives. Wild animals lost their habitats, as seen in recent Australian wildfires. The damages accumulated to billions of dollars. After wildfires, forests must be restored to return the ecological climates for local residents and habitats for animals. Like other developed countries, each year Canada spends millions of dollars to manage forests, keep them healthy, make them more resilient to insects and diseases and replant trees after harvest. It has been proven that aerial application plays a critical
role in forest management. In January 2019, Expedition Helicopters, a company based in Cochrane Ontario, Canada, won a bid for aerial seeding programs on forests in the Northwestern Region of Ontario. This project involved seeding a total 1,164 hectares (4,657 acres) of pine forests in northern Ontario. The program planning commenced mid-March and the actual seeding carried out by mid-April 2019. The challenge for applicators was the seeding rate was so small, only 75 to 125 grams of seeds per hectare (0.067 to 0.11 lbs/acre). The existing system used a tank having an orifice plate on the dispensing gate to spread seeds. The orifice size was calibrated on the ground to the desired amount of seeds per minute. Every time the seeding rate was changed, the
