BRB w/ Nathan P - Drone Reforestation, NY Style Bagels & I Contain Multitudes
Drones helping forests regenerate, your very own New York classic at home, and the hidden role of microbes in our living environments.
Hi all,
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P - a weekly newsletter featuring 1 Breakthrough, 1 Recipe, and 1 Book on food & climate.
Before we get started, here are some highlights of food & climate in the news this week:
The Woolly-Mammoth Meatball Is an All-Time Great Food Stunt (The Altantic)
‘Bees are sentient’: inside the stunning brains of nature’s hardest workers (The Guardian)
💥 Breakthrough: Drone Reforestation
I believe nature-based carbon removal will succeed both in curbing emissions and creating flourishing ecosystems. Some of it could be enabled by drones.
Climate change is exacerbating the severity of fires with altered water cycles and longer dry seasons. Low-severity, and sometimes healthy forest fires, burn just the forest tops and can allow certain trees to reproduce. Pine cones, for instance, release their seeds when exposed to high heat.
However, in severe fires occasionally spanning 1M+ acres, entire trees smolder with heat so intense that even seeds a few feet below ground get burnt. In such scenarios, many forests will struggle to regenerate on their own.
This is where drones can help. Many startups - like AirSeed, Flash Forest, and Mast Reforestation - want to use them to accelerate tree renewal by planting seeds and seedlings from above. Mast Reforestation (previously DroneSeed) targets burnt forests, generating revenue from carbon credits and off-sets from the trees planted.
Mast Reforestation acquired a seed bank called SilvaSeed, which has hundreds of species’ seeds from hundreds of forests. The goal is to regenerate burnt forests with the seeds of local species best matching from the blaze. These seeds or seedlings are delivered in puck-sized fibrous vessels to increase chances of survival.
Mast Reforestation’s drones are not the small ones we’re used to used to. These are drones 8ft in diameter that can handle a 57lb payload, with a flight time between 8 and 18 minutes. They are equipped with LiDAR technology - Light Detection and Ranging - to generate topographic maps where trees can and cannot grow (e.g. on roads or other vegetation). It then determines the best flight path for planting.
Though, as you may have experienced from planting seeds in a vegetable garden, not all seeds become plants. And illegitimate carbon credit schemes are abound. So if Mast Reforestation is selling carbon off-sets, how do they ensure these trees are growing and drawing carbon?
For the carbon credits to be valid, a 3rd party needs to evaluate the trees a minimum of 1 year later. They assess the health and growth of trees based on a representative sample area. This duration is to ensure that trees have sprouted, accustomed to the local hydrology, and survived one dry season - the toughest feat for a young tree.
Startups like Mast Reforestation seek to plant 1 billion trees in the next few decades. For context, we currently have 3 trillion trees on Earth, half of the 6 trillion trees pre-Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago. Drone reforestation can help burnt forests regrow - though we need efforts to prevent deforestation in the first place.
There are other forms of nature-based solutions like cultivating seaweed, protecting mangroves, and growing ranches. All of these have their role in carbon capture and ecosystem harmony.
Which are you most interested in learning more about? Reply to this email or let me know in the comments.
🥘 Recipe: NY Style Bagels
Newsflash: you can make NY style bagels at home. From almost anywhere. Here’s how to impress your friends and family for your next brunch.
Scroll to the bottom for the recipe.
The warmth and chewiness of these bagels out of the oven is unbeatable. Lather on the cream cheese, slap on the lox, or crown with sliced avocado and your favorite toppings. The world is your oyster.
PS: if you make it, please send pictures :)
📚 Book: I Contain Multitudes
Microbes challenge our concept of the self. Our microbiome outnumber our cells in number by 100 to 1. So where do we draw the boundary of ourselves? Are these microbes separate entities, or are they part of us?
Scientific journalist Ed Yong explores the wonders of the microbial world in I Contain Multitudes. His engaging and approachable writing will change the way you view yourself and your living environments.
Understanding microbes and their relationships is also a key step to reach many of our food and climate goals.
4 key roles microbes play I find fascinating:
Microbes are crucial for for food production: all plants and animals have symbiotic relationships with microbes. Better understanding and harnessing these organisms is the next frontier in sequestering more carbon from agriculture, preventing animal epidemics, and producing more nutritious food.
Breast milk cultivates relationships with beneficial gut microbes: one of the key sugars in human breast milk are called human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). They are not digestible by the infant: they actually serve to feed and cultivate beneficial microbes like Bifidobacterium for the baby’s immunity.
Symbiotic bacteria can enable us to eradicate mosquito diseases: scientists discovered that Wolbachia, an intracellular bacteria that infects insects, can prevent mosquitos from getting infected and spreading dengue fever. It’s also highly contagious - meaning that a few Wolbachia mosquitos can rapidly eradicate dengue fever infection in communities.
We gain abilities through our gut microbiome: some folks in Japan got the ability to digest certain seaweeds (like nori) from marine bacteria. Bacteria are highly adaptable thanks to a process called Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT). And bacteria can also transfer abilities to our own gut microbes - like Zobelia galactanivorans enabling many Asian populations to digest seaweed.
Thank you for reading - BRB next week ✌️
🥘 Recipe: NY Style Bagels
I know this says 8 servings and there are only 5 bagels pictured above… I got hungry. Take a look here for video instructions. Adapted from Joshua Weissman.
Ingredients (8 servings)
500 grams bread flour (I recommend organic)
Water
10 grams yeast
23 grams sugar
6 grams salt
Everything seasoning (the Trader Joe’s one is fantastic - otherwise mix 2 Tbsp garlic flakes, 2 ½ Tbsp onion flakes, 1 ½ Tbsp white sesame seeds, 1 Tbsp poppy seeds, 1 Tbsp black sesame seeds, and ½ Tbsp flaky sea salt)
Instructions (1h45, active time 30 mins)
Warm 300mL of water to 90F, then add 10g of yeast and 23g of sugar. Mix and let bloom for 10 minutes.
Mix 500g of flour and 6g of salt, then add the yeasty mixture and mix with hands to bring it together.
Pour the contents to a tabletop, then knead the dough by folding and pushing against itself. Roll on an unfloured surface until silky smooth.
Let rise for 1h in oiled bowl covered with a cloth.
Press the center of the dough to degas, then cut into 8 equal pieces.
For each, fold sides in and roll until it makes a smooth ball. Let rest for 10 minutes.
Push floured thumb through dough, then twirl around with two fingers to make bigger hole (about 1-1.5” in diameter) for each dough ball.
Boil bagels 1-2 minutes per side. Brush each bagel with egg wash, and sprinkle on everything bagel seasoning.
Bake at 425F for 20 minutes. Enjoy with your besties :)
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier - I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
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