I think you have the Geoengineering Google Group confused with the Discovery Channel, unless your message was sent to them and you copied the group on it. This is a discussion group for geoengineering and because of the delay in the broadcasts of this series internationally, I volunteered to summarize the programs for those who were not able to see them yet. I still have 5 to do also!
As for the Raining Forests program, I concluded that the black mangrove seedlings failed to take root because they were planted in January at the uppermost northern extent of their natural range, a consequence of the filming schedule that impacted other programs in the series as well. Another explanation could be as Hodges noted, due to soil conditions. He found that some of them had begun sending out roots, meaning that the drop from the helicopters had not destroyed them. In general, however, objects dropped from aircraft attain a terminal velocity of over 200mph when they impact the ground, rendering this method useless for all but the softest of soil, which as it turned out was the case for the sand bar in Louisiana where this study took place. I see no way this could be duplicated for forests and saplings. Your proposal to instead drop seeds has also been used before, but primarily to reseed hillsides with grass, not plant trees. Also, forests are complex ecosystems, so one cannot "replant a forest," simply by dropping some seeds from an aircraft. I would also question the extent to which such programs would be effective in planting trees this way. That's why foresters plant saplings and not seeds. You are correct in that the Discovery Channel program went overboard on their concerns about the carbon footprint for this and the other programs as well. I have no control over the comments from critics that they presented on their website. You can check their website to see if there is some kind of comment mechanism for these programs. I am not aware of one. Alvia Gaskill TV Critic (sort of) ----- Original Message ----- From: "greenflight" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "geoengineering" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 4:38 PM Subject: [geo] Aerial Reforestation is Nature's way! Comments to Mark Hodges "Raining Forests" I am writing to you because our NGO has also been working for the last ten years in the same general idea I watched yesterday in the ‘Raining Forests’ program at the Discovery Channel. First of all I want to congratulate you and all of the people involved with the show for a wonderfully entertaining and illustrative production. I am really sorry you did not get the results you were expecting but I am certain you are on the right track. Commenting your experiment outcome (and probably you already have arrived at the same conclusion), l think you should revise the drop altitude and type of container that were selected. At first look, it seems that the chosen combination was fatal because of the resulting mass, terminal velocity and consequent violent deceleration might have crushed and destroyed the seeds cellular cytoskeleton, effectively ‘killing’ them. We think a seeded hydro-mulch mix approach from a much lower altitude could better replicate the natural aerial reforestation process that has been successfully going-on since the beginning of time, yielding a superior result. A bottleneck in this alternative would be getting a large enough native seed stock to do the job with hydro-mulch on a sufficient grand scale (only in Mexico, we are talking of more than one hundred million acres). But we think it is not that difficult to build the necessary scheme and infrastructure to solve that particular problem in the same manner you propose, that is, by getting indigenous communities to participate and benefit. Going straight to the point, I want to ask you if you could get in touch with the Discovery Channel people and get them to change some of the “Critics Voice’s” assertions 'they' make on the corresponding Web page for the ‘Raining Forests’ program, which are quite wrong and could by-chance hamper arduous and longstanding lobbying efforts. In order of appearance, it is stated there that the necessary flights carbon-footprint would be too large and, for that reason, subject to condemnation. Well, that could probably be true if helicopters were the chosen aircraft for the job but it’s not the case for large Single- Engine Air Tankers that can fly slow and low enough for an accurate drop with very big loads. For instance a Bell 212 helicopter like the ones I think are used on your experiment consume 115 GPH while a large SEAT does 70 GPH. But that is not all; a SEAT can load almost 9000 pounds of seeds while the Bell 212 could do only half that load safely. So for that matter, a SEAT would “yield” 130 pounds of seed per gallon of burned fuel, while the helicopter would only yield 40 pounds of seeds per gallon. That is a 3.25 to 1 productivity ratio; or, in this case, 70% less carbon-footprint per pound of seeds. Furthermore, the same SEAT “fleet” might be utilized in a better wildfire firefighting strategy during the fire season, effectively offsetting any aerial reforestation carbon-footprint and much more. I think is futile to fight the senseless SOP argument and, most of all, the people who defend it; so let that be. But what we cannot in any way let pass is the bold, inaccurate and careless final statement that “Aerial reforestation would, of course, be hugely expensive.” If anything, Ag-aviation has been demonstrating for the past 70 years to the world and without contest that there is no cheaper way of sowing seeds. The direct operation costs of aerial seeding, is in the cents per acre figure. And there is no way that manual reforestation can beat that. Seeds for aerial reforestation also are infinitely less expensive to produce than the seedlings needed for manual reforestation. Please help us by making sure that the Discovery Channel fixes those substantial mistakes. We are not against debate nor do we run away from a good honest polemic but in that tenure, if Discovery Channel is going to publish those “Critic’s Voice’s”, the least they could do is give an equal opportunity for refutations. Fundación Vuelo Verde, A.C. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
