Createk Design Lab, Interdisciplinary Institute for Technological Innovation, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada.
National Tropical Botanical Garden, Kalāheo, HI, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Sep 13;12(1):14827. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-17679-x.
Kaua'i, an island within the Hawai'i archipelago, is home of a unique flora that contains 250 single-island endemic plant species. Threats have led to a significant population decrease where 97% of these plant species are now listed as endangered, critically endangered, or extinct. Vertical cliff habitats on Kaua'i work as refugia to protect plants from their stressors. However, this habitat makes conservation work particularly difficult, forcing scientists, and botanists to use risky and time-consuming methods such as abseiling to access remote plant populations. Here we present the Mamba, the first aerial system capable of sampling plants on cliffs. This system is operated by two pilots and consists of an actively controlled platform suspended by a long cable under a lifting drone. Eleven otherwise inaccessible samples from five critically endangered species were collected during the first field trials on Kaua'i Island. The samples are currently surviving in nurseries, demonstrating that the Mamba can be used to complete the conservation life cycle for organisms located in difficult areas, from location to collection, then cultivation and outplanting.
考艾岛是夏威夷群岛的一个岛屿，拥有独特的植物群，其中包含 250 种单一岛屿特有植物物种。这些植物物种中有 97%现在都被列为濒危、极危或灭绝物种，威胁导致其数量显著减少。考艾岛的垂直悬崖栖息地是植物的避难所，可以保护它们免受压力。然而，这种栖息地使得保护工作特别困难，迫使科学家和植物学家使用危险且耗时的方法，如使用绳索下降，才能接触到偏远地区的植物种群。在这里，我们展示了 Mamba，这是第一个能够在悬崖上采样植物的空中系统。该系统由两名飞行员操作，由一个由长电缆悬挂的主动控制平台和一架提升无人机组成。在考艾岛的首次实地试验中，共采集了来自五个极危物种的 11 个原本无法到达的样本。这些样本目前正在苗圃中存活，表明 Mamba 可用于完成位于困难地区的生物的保护生命周期，从定位到采集，再到培养和重新种植。
