Jan 6, 2009 08:30 AM
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Tue Feb 9
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Lumber companies are calling for offshore clear-cutting, logging forests that have been underwater for decades. And environmentalists have discovered the only loggers they could love.
Many forests packed with trees are now submerged in lakes, mostly due to humans rerouting water for dams and setting up reservoirs. Though they've been underwater for decades in some cases, their trees still make for good lumber. And since the trees are already dead, it's an environmentally-friendly way to get a lot of wood without cutting into living forests on dry land.
Triton Logging is a company that specializes in lumber processing, and they've got a giant underwater saw robot that can clearcut submerged trees - by remote control, from a desktop computer. Wired did an interesting article about Triton a couple of years ago, and now they're in the news again at Environmental Graffiti, where Linda McCormick wonders why Triton's Sawfish robot hasn't caught on, despite there being possibly 300 million submerged trees. (Some might even be thousands of years old.)
Tree chopping image by Kevin Hand, via Wired.
Send an email to Annalee Newitz, the author of this post, at annalee@io9.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
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