Maintainance of wetlands with nutrient recovery

Wetlands play a hugely important and diverse role in environmental management. A key function is that they act as traps for nutrients that would otherwise run off into watercourses and contribute to eutrophication. To maintain and improve this function, and to prevent wetlands from becoming overgrown, maintenance in the form of reed cutting and removal is required. There are currently no attractive methods for this. The project aims to develop a new machine concept for wetland maintenance based on drone technology, to help ensure that more wetlands are maintained and that a larger amount of nutrients can be recovered by using the reed clippings as fertiliser, feed and soil improvement. Initiativ Utö, an organisation that has established several wetlands in the Stockholm archipelago and clearly experienced the lack of suitable tools for maintenance, is the owner of the need. The main partner is Nordluft, a company that develops drone systems based on larger drones in swarms for various purposes.