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Google Earth is a free computer program that enables you to mark points and outline areas on a global map that is based on satellite imagery. You must be online in order to use it, and a faster connection helps.
Download the program from here: http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html
The Google Earth User Guide can be accessed from the Help menu in Google Earth. Exploring it can give you some basic tips and skills for using the program, finding places, navigating, and so on. The following sections review how to set and edit a placemark or point, how to draw and edit a polygon or area, and how to send the resulting .kmz files to other people.
Creating a placemark
In Google Earth, navigate to where you want the placemark. Click the Add Placemark button at the top of your screen (with the yellow pushpin).
1. A window will appear, which you can move out of the way with your mouse, in which you can enter name, coordinates, style information, the height of the view, and any other info in the description window.
2. A pushpin will appear in the center of the 3D viewer, with a flashing box around it. You can position the pushpin with your mouse.
3. When you click OK on the window, the placemark is saved in your My Places folder (left hand side of the screen). Subsequently, you can navigate to this placemark by double-clicking on it. You can choose to reveal it or hide it using its checkmark box.
4. To edit the placemark after you have saved it, you can right click on it in Windows/Linux and choose Properties. This opens the window, where you can change its location, information, view, altitude and description. Click OK to save.
Creating and editing a polygon or area
To create a polygon or area, navigate so that the entire area of your polygon is in view. Click the Add Polygon icon to the right of the Add Placemark icon at the top of the screen.
Submitted by Peter Donovan on Thu, 07/08/2010 - 4:29pm
Submitted by Peter Donovan on Tue, 06/22/2010 - 11:27am
At long last the first draft of Measuring soil carbon change: a flexible, practical, local method is available for download, review, and use. About 2 megabytes, pdf.
It is intended as a guide for do-it-yourselfers as well as part of the operating method for the Soil Carbon Challenge. It is also the first guide that attempts to understand and accommodate the variety of purposes or objectives people have in measuring soil carbon. Up to now, soil carbon measurement has been treated almost exclusively as a technical issue. But the main sources of risk and uncertainty in achieving the objectives are social, having to do with beliefs and attitudes.
Based on published literature and experience, this method outlines how to establish fixed plots, take samples, get them analyzed with the dry combustion method, and make calculations from the results.
Though targeted primarily at those who want to show possibility, and get feedback for their management, the guide should be helpful for those who wish to quantify carbon tonnage for "offsets" or research projects as well. How and what you measure, as well as the sources of uncertainty, depend on your purpose.
Measuring carbon change means establishing and measuring baseline plots, and then remeasuring them after 3 years or so.
Depending on the intensity and depths needed, I can establish and measure 4 baseline plots for US$1000 plus travel. Contact Peter (peter at wallowa dot net) for details.
Submitted by Peter Donovan on Fri, 06/04/2010 - 10:28am
The Africa Centre for Holistic Management and Allan Savory have won the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Congratulations to all involved, and may the recognition of the crucial importance of biosphere processes and biosphere work continue to spread.
http://www.savoryinstitute.com/imported-20100211170933-home/2010/6/2/all...
Submitted by Peter Donovan on Tue, 06/01/2010 - 7:07am
The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries has an interesting 60-page guide to growing soil organic matter in pastures.
"This book is based on findings from a three year project investigating soil carbon levels in pastures under different management practices in south east NSW. It is designed to be of practical use to farmers who want to increase their soil carbon levels. It includes basic information on soil carbon and reports the project's findings regarding the impact of pasture management on soil carbon."
It can be downloaded from here:
http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/resources/soils/soil-carbon/increa...
Submitted by Peter Donovan on Wed, 05/19/2010 - 7:08am
Australian soil scientist Christine Jones has a new paper out that summarizes much of her conclusions about the soil carbon opportunity. "For some time, analysts have tipped carbon to become the world’s most traded commodity. The reality is that it has been the world’s most traded commodity for millennia." She also describes the crucial role of mycorrhizal fungi, and characterizes many of the conventional practices of modern industrial agriculture, such as the application of water-soluble nitrogen and phosphorus, along with soil disturbance, as inimical to the accumulation of beneficial carbon in the soil. Highly recommended, attached below.
Submitted by Peter Donovan on Mon, 04/12/2010 - 6:43pm
In general, statistical accuracy increases with the square root of sample size. Doubling your sensitivity and accuracy quadruples your cost. It's a power law, not a normal distribution, and it pushes us toward extremes.
In measuring soil carbon using traditional sampling, what this means is that the high achievers are easiest and cheapest to measure (circled red in the diagram below). A sampling scheme that is adequate for measuring a large change in soil carbon between an initial baseline and resampling, may not yield a significant result if the change turns out to be small.
Measurement will thus tend to highlight the more successful strategies, and the more motivated and successful managers.
Seth Godin, author of the book TRIBES, writes, "there is no tribe of normal. People don't coalesce into active and committed tribes around the status quo."
Submitted by Peter Donovan on Sat, 02/20/2010 - 8:06pm
Attached below is a simple draft greenhouse gas calculator for grass and cattle producers, in Microsoft Excel format. This calculator differs from many in that it recognizes that soil, and soil biology, is a principal factor influencing the composition of the atmosphere. To judge or quantify such effects, site-specific measurements are needed, such as changes in soil carbon levels over time.
The promise of a calculator is that you can assess your consumption of resources, or your impact, and presumably be motivated to reduce it. However, the world is not just an input-output system, or collection of sinks and sources. There are complex interdependencies, flows, and cycles. When people say that it takes a village to raise a child, they do not mean that a village is destroyed for every child raised. There can be synergy, mutual benefit. Likewise for the water, solar energy, and carbon that goes into life processes. They are not destroyed.
However, there seems to be popular demand, and this draft calculator is a response to that demand, and an effort to enlarge perceptions of the interdependencies.
For most grass-based cattle producers, the major fluxes of greenhouse gases are likely to be methane from enteric fermentation, and changes in soil carbon levels.
The calculator comes preloaded with fictitious figures based on a 10,000 acre property, with 600 cow-calf pairs, that ships 800-pound yearlings.
Suggestions welcome.
Choose create content, map instance.
1. Name the project.
2. Select the Template type: is this an instance of carbon gain, loss, or no change?
3. Description: summarize. USE HTML tags to place a photo (copy code from other examples), separate paragraphs, and include links. Links to published papers should have as their text, the short title of the journal, issue, year, pages.
4. Carbon change in T C per ha per yr, or as a percentage per year to a given depth in cm. To calculate the percentage:
(1 - (percent now/percent then ^ years ^ -1))*100
e.g. if carbon percentage went from .55 to 1.4 in 14 years, 1.4/.55 = 2.545. The 14th root of this can be found on most scientific calculators by raising 2.545 to the 1/14 power, which is 1.069. Less 1, times 100 this gives 6.9% increase per year. Annual carbon loss percentages can be calculated similarly.
5. Coordinates: Click on Location tab to bring in map. Or enter, decimal format, LONGITUDE FIRST, e.g. -103.36453,38.495857
Submitted by Peter Donovan on Fri, 01/08/2010 - 5:34pm
This is a mapping project for measured changes in soil carbon content over time. The purpose is not to aggregate "offsets" or to make broad predictions, but to show what's possible as verified by actual measurements. When the purpose is to show what is possible, rather than to generate a broad-scale prediction or quantify carbon offsets, questions of statistical reliability are less troubling.
There are many stories that are told about soil carbon, and what its possibilities are. Much conversation on this topic has substituted assumptions for observations. Repeated measurements at the same location appear to be rare.
If you have data you would like to include, or can suggest good data, please contact us, info at soilcarboncoalition dot org, or you may start with a data form attached below.
Carbon gains and losses are expressed in metric tons of carbon (not carbon dioxide) per hectare per year, or as annual percentage increase where bulk density measurements have not been taken.
The map
You may use the Google Earth version if you have Google Earth installed.
Otherwise use the Google Maps version.
The data points
You may view the data points in page format here, and even subscribe to an RSS feed.
Conversions
To convert carbon to CO2, multiply by 3.67. For CO2 to C, multiply by .273. (The molecular weight of CO2 is 16 for each oxygen atom, and 12 for the carbon atom, so the ratio of CO2 to C is 44:12.)
To convert hectares to acres, multiply by 2.47. To convert acres to hectares, multiply by .404.
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