Meet 9 ecopreneurs with innovative solutions to conserve, restore and grow US forests

Healthy forests are instrumental to addressing some of the most pressing issues of the day: slowing climate change and the loss of biodiversity, advancing social equity and sequestering greenhouse gas emissions. They also provide habitats for wildlife, a clean and abundant supply of water for people, improve air quality and regulate temperatures in cities.

While forest cover in the US has steadily increased by 7.3 million hectares between 1990 and 2020, these trees are under increasing threat. The Trillion Trees: United States Challenge called for ecopreneurs who are tackling these challenges to submit their innovative solutions and business models on UpLink.

The UpLink Challenge was run in collaboration with 1t.org’s US Chapter and American Forests. Supporting partners included Carbon Counts, Chicago Region Trees Initiative, Forest Proud, Michigan State University, Morton Arboretum, National Indian Carbon Coalition, NCX, One Tree Planted, United States Department of Agriculture and the World Resources Institute.

After sourcing submissions for nearly two months, an expert panel reviewed all solutions, finally selecting a cohort of nine Top Innovators.

Here are all nine of the UpLink Trillion Trees: United States Challenge winners:

Cultivo Land unlocks investments to regenerate nature at scale through building and packaging portfolios of natural capital for institutions and shares profits with land owners and land stewards.

Green Pocket Forests’ mission is to green urban spaces using the Miyawaki method, an ultra-dense planting method. They work with schools, cities, corporations, and organizations to facilitate a community planting process across the United States.

Land Life Company combines technology and data with local knowledge and collaborative partnerships to increase the scale, efficiency and transparency of reforestation in North America, and beyond.

Natural Urban Forests, a Seattle-based for-profit social enterprise, works with private individuals and companies to plant native forests utilizing the Miyawaki method for increased biodiversity, habitat stability, and to offset carbon emissions.

OroraTech combines near real-time fire and satellite data processing and visualization, and provides a complete risk analysis, detection, and monitoring of fires and damage assessment after the incidents.

Pact Renewables Pty manufactures soil degradable planting pots based on a variety of mineral-based composites through their proprietary "dPOT technology" to help scale and increase the survivability of tree planting activities.

Pano AI offers a fully integrated active wildfire detection solution that combines advanced hardware, artificial intelligence, and an easy-to-use cloud-based interface. Their technology can be used to detect, confirm, and pinpoint new wildfire ignitions.

Treeswift’s high-resolution sensors operate underneath the forest canopy and replace traditional forest measurement tools to measure individual per-tree metrics such as size, species, quality, merchantable products, and geospatial information. Thus providing forest owners and managers with actionable data that enables them to better manage their forests and trees.

TreeWheel is an easy-to-use mobile app that builds personal and public involvement in climate change by allowing anyone to plant more trees through a simple click.

Ensuring the sustainable use of standing-forest resources and reforestation at scale in the United States of America requires innovative approaches, combining traditional knowledge and new technologies, as well as new business models.

Over the coming months, these nine Top Innovators will have an opportunity to scale their impact through UpLink's Innovation Network in order to help achieve these challenges.

1t.org is the World Economic Forum’s Trillion Trees Platform and serves the global movement to conserve, restore and grow a trillion trees by 2030, in support of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

Do you have an idea that could help scale Nature-based Solutions? Do you want to offer help to one of the Innovators? Join UpLink now.