How plants and animals are teaching scientists to fight climate change
The immensity of a program to reforest large swaths of the Amazon is hard to conceive — it aims to plant millions of trees over a remote area of Brazil roughly the size of Pennsylvania. If that wasn’t a big enough challenge, there’s also the threat seedlings face from dry spells, non-native plants and the voracious leaf-cutter ant.
Enter a Brazilian industrial engineer and his partners, who think they have a solution. The team calls their invention Nucleario — a circular device that creates a safe oasis for a young tree, complete with mulchy ground cover, a water cistern to conserve rainfall and a wall to keep out invasive plants and creatures.
The invention was recently awarded a $100,000 prize in a worldwide design challenge, sponsored by the Biomimicry Institute, a Missoula, Montana-based nonprofit that supports scientists and inventors who find solutions to man-made problems with designs inspired by the natural world.