For farmers in the US, Europe, and Australia there is a real and growing fear of the far-off GISers and their societal benefit/cost models that quantify and spatially identify so called non-source-point pollution: soil erosion, manure wash-off, as well as fertilizer, weed and pesticide leakages. Take some public data, some aerial imagery, and add a GISer on a mission to clean up "dirty" farmers and suddenly appears a GIS "red drape" layer easily transposed into "red tape" whenever a farmer relies on public support (subsidy) for his crops. In Australia, the same process goes on for land clearing.
For example, a watershed's runoff that supplies water for Des Moines, Iowa is found to be high in atrazine (a weed/herbicide) as well as nitrate (nitrogen fertilizer leakage). Who wants these material in their drinking water? Solution... GIS models tied to small scale soil survey, DEMs with a +/- error greater than the landscape topography of most quarter sections, out of date remote sensing, organized against emerging county PLS ownership listing and the like have been and are used to pin point (source-point) likely sources of these pollutions. Result? Any field with in the watershed that is of a certain soil texture, with excessive slope, and planted to corn becomes a target to regulate - another 85 percent solution. Imagine a farmer, out standing in his field, looking up as a shadow darkens his day, suddenly finding himself in the spider web of this "red drape" spewing out of the far away GISer's pollution identification model.... guilty till proven innocent. Reality? No, the aerial image is out of date; he terraced the ground seven years ago. No, he has not used atrazine for five years, here are his records. No, he doesn't use manure; the pig farm across the road went bankrupt three years ago. And no, he has never fall applied nitrogen, it's a dumb practice on these soils, anyone with common sense would know that.... Here is another angle. These days the seed companies are more likely owned by pesticide and herbicide manufacturers than not. It's a neat arrangement. You build into the genetic character (GMO) of your best yielding varieties resistance to your patented herbicides sold by the same outfit but from another outlet and increasingly the outlet. A real package that offers most farming systems increased productivity. But the companies knows that the seed for wheat and soybeans can be held back and again planted next season and they only license a single usage. So the seed/chemical companies build-in another gene that fluoresces uniquely (they glow if you have the right wavelength sensor) such that fields planted to the line (variety) can be identified from the company's remote sensing/photography plane(s). With in hours, the company gene sheriff has downloaded georeferenced imagery of fluoresced fields, overlain and cross referenced against this season's license records, including roads and ower/tennant names on to his GPS handheld that also generates shortest routes to the next nearest gene rustler.... where he can issue a "non-licensed use of patented gene seed stocks" theft report... Far fetched you think? Not at all, its real or soon will be! FYI MidNight Mapper neil --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 9766
