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Networking the Redwoods
linuxwrangler writes "SF Gate is reporting that ecology researchers are outfitting a grove of trees with tiny "micromote" sensors to monitor the light, humidity and other conditions as the trees grow. The sensors, running the open-source Tiny OS, form and maintain their own network. This test of the "Smart Dust" concept (mentioned on /. earlier) only uses 50 sensors but scientists hope to be able to deploy the sensors on a large scale to help figure out why California's Redwoods are dying off at an alarming rate."
Last I heard was that redwoods need to have a fire to germinate the seeds. Otherwise new tree won't grow. So is it really that redwoods are dying off, or is it that our mis-informed forest management has kept fires from going trough and letting new trees grow. I was at Armstrong Woods a couple of weeks ago (big redwood grove out past Guernville in Sonoma county). They had actually resorted to planting new redwoods. Let them BURN!!!! You'll actually get more trees. At least that is what I've heard...
Who needs Kyoto, period? Mostly just people like Johnny Cretin (mispelling intentional) who need a legacy. Otherwise it's just a waste of resources directed at the wrong problem.
Take a look at this: (http://www.scienceagogo.com)
"14 August 2003
Cosmic Rays The Biggest Culprit In Global Warming
Global warming will not be reduced much by efforts to limit carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere, say two scientists.
Dr. Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist from the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Prof. Jan Veiser a geochemist at the University of Ottawa in Canada, say that temperature variations are due more to cosmic forces than to the actions of man.
In a recent article published in GSA Today, the journal of the Geographic Society of America, Shaviv and Veiser tell of their studies illustrating a correlation between past cosmic ray flux - the high-energy particles reaching us from stellar explosions - and long-term climate variability, as recorded by oxygen isotopes trapped in rocks formed by ancient marine fossils. The level of cosmic ray activity reaching the earth and its atmosphere was reconstructed using another isotopic record in meteorites.
The study showed that peak periods of cosmic rays reaching the earth over the past 550 million years coincided with lower global temperatures, apparently due to the way that the cosmic rays promote low-level cloud formation, hence blocking out the sun. No correlation was obtained, however, with the changing amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The conclusion of the two scientists is that celestial processes seem to be the dominant influence on climate change, and that increased carbon dioxide release, while certainly not beneficial, is only secondary to those forces which are beyond our control.
In practical terms, says Dr. Shaviv, "The operative significance of our research is that a significant reduction of the release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man." Thus, say the scientists, the Kyoto accord of 1997 - which was aimed at tackling the global warming phenomenon through limitations on carbon dioxide - is not the panacea some thought it would be.
Taking the long-range view, Dr. Shaviv and Prof. Veiser believe that fluctuations in cosmic ray emissions account for about 75 percent of climate variation throughout the millennia. They acknowledge that this position pits them against prevailing scientific opinion, which still places a heavy emphasis on the negative role of greenhouse gases. "
It depends on your definition of sound. Seriously.
If sound is a vibration of air molecules that an average human ear can detect, then yes.
If sound is defined in some way that actually involves being measured at the time of incident, then no.
Do the nuclear reactions within the sun stop when you are not staring directly at it?
"A deepness in the sky", the prequel to the popular "A fire upon the deep" by Vernor Vinge, has these things in action in a cool application. (This is a Sci-fi book, just to clarify)
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
First off, our relationship with naturally occuring forest fires need to change in a big way (and not by cutting down all the trees as our idiotic president suggested recently). And, of course, fire is needed by some pine and fir trees. That said, I'm 99.9% positive this is not true of redwoods. For one thing, fire is very rare in areas where coastal redwood trees grow (but it does happen - mostly lightning strikes)...
I'm not a forester, rather a geographer by education and computer geek by profession, but I've lived in Humboldt County for the last 16 years, and I think I would have heard about the redwood tree germination/fire connection if there was one.
On a side note, I've meet the professor from Humboldt State University in the article, Steve Sillett (I used to drive fieldtrips when I was a student at HSU). He (and his students) use crossbows to shoot a thin line over a sturdy branch (sometimes over 100 feet high), and then pull over sucessivly thicker lines. Then they pull out the "climbing ascenders" (pull up and clamp the right one, step up, pull up and clamp the left one, step up - repeat a couple hundred times). Every effort is made to do no harm to the trees. There truly is a whole ecosystem in those redwoods, including newts and other creatures that have never been on the ground.
There is an IMAX film called Adventures in Wild California which features Steve climbing and studying tall trees (this time sequoias rather than coastal redwoods). While not the best IMAX movies I've seen, the scenery is awesome.
just my 2 cents....
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
"I attribute the symptoms of stress seen in thee rfiles/The_Green_Scene2693.pdf)
redwoods around Bakersfield to the fundamental differences in soil acidity," (http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/counties/cekern/newslett
Acidity as we all know can be increased by adding liquified SO4 (I think that's the one) which is a common pollutant (and other such harmful chemicals).
It may not be as simple as this, but pollution is more than just a few degree C temperature increases. Pollution has also altered weather patterns: here in BC we are seeing record minumum rainfall, year after year (a place that's supposed to be wet like Seattle), in other parts of the world they are seeing record maximum rainfall. (Sorry no scientific bases for this.
This is turn changes the soil the trees are used to and kills them, be it not allowing enough nutriets to go deep enough or the acidity killing the plants (like what happens in the east)
Here in BC I'm noticing more and more moss growing on our lawn and less grass, we haven't changed anything...
Am I saying that this tells the whole story or that I even know anything about redwoods, but don't discredit Kyoto + pollution = killer by just what a few scientists say about global warming, and I haven't heard a more logical explanation for the increase in temperatures I've seen myself.
I've found a competing system from www.millennial.net from MIT that actually performs much better (when comparing demo kits). Millennial has spent their R&D on firmware instead of hardware. Their IBeans provide a very flexible out-of-the box interface for embedded products. As with DUST, the parts cost (in 1000+ qty) is under $20, but expect to pay at least another $50 for their prorietary code (for same qty).
Get a fucking life.
See, you already know people aren't going to change in any significant way. It's just the way it is. You could waste all your time and energy being a really annoying, whiney little fucker about it, or you could accept it.
Why accept it?
Because there are other ways to reduce the environmental damage, and they don't require changing human nature to acheive. Push for nuclear power - coal fired plants, which we're forced to use thanks to one-dimensional thinkers like yourself, not only create more pollution but release more radioactive material every *week* than all the nuclear plants ever built - including Chernobyl. Push for fusion research. Push high-performance electric vehicles. Push space exploration, orbital power satellites, and asteroid resource exploitation. Stop thinking "mankind is evil", you self-hating little twerp, and start thinking productively. Usefully. You know - in ways that might actually have a positive effect.
But no, it's much more fun to rant and rave and whine about all the things we're doing wrong. It's more satisfying to sit on your ass and moan bitterly about how the rest of us are fucking things up for you. See, apparently, you're just too fucking stupid to realize that your pointless whining is as about as persuasive as a two-year-old's screams for more candy.
Am I the only one that is both annoyed and amused by a 4.5 megabyte tarball for something that's supposed to be a Tiny OS? I'd love to dig in and check it out, but it looks to me like it'd be wading into bloatware. Can any Tiny OS acolytes out there show me the light?
The redwood trees are tough but that doesn't mean they're immune to any of the factors known to affect tree health. For example, one of the most basic factors affecting tree health is water supply. Any tree will start dying if water availability in its root zone is reduced below a survival threshold value. We know that compared to 50 years or more ago, California has been consuming more and more water, especially groundwater, to the extent that there are water supply arguments. In many places the water table has been dropping even during wetter years. This could be a pointer to the cause of the trees' problems.
Scroogle
There's a part of Death Valley called the Racetrack. Perhaps an exception could be made to the "no equipment in wilderness areas" policy for tiny sensors. For those that don't know, the Racetrack is an ultra-flat part of Death Valley known for a field of rocks that move around and leave tracks when no one is looking. No one knows why, and some of those rocks are pretty damned heavy. It would be great to leave some sort of remote sensors there to find out why they move.