Dear Terry

I see that you approach environments from a traditional production
research and development perspective. So I propose that the primary
basis for our difference is that I approach these environmental concerns
from another world view.

I am not interested in convincing you of anything significant just that
all our knowledge of things is partial and therefore knowledge (sharing)
processes are essential to design and environmental understanding.

Just as you knew thousands of knots in a past existence it may be of
interest for you to know that I was a farmer - who became an organic
farmer in 1976 - a time when the word organic was linked to social
deviance communism and the devil (some might recall).

The relationship between soil and vegetation is a natural relation so a
huge amount of carbon from vegetation is already combined with minerals
and organisms to form the substance that we call soil ... so much so
that the estimated agricultural production of CO2 in the USA in 1999 was
27.9 MMT (million metric tonnes) per year while the estimated release of
carbon from soils caused by cropping related erosion was 15 MMT per year
- I am no scientist but this would indicate that based on atomic weight
more carbon is released from the soil by farming practices than is
produced by farm machinery and other agriculture related sources in
enacting these practices. Early carbon sequestering proposals (c1998-99)
involved changes to these flawed farming practices through mulching
green manuring and other organic processes.

What is also significant in soil erosion is that mud ferments organic
material releasing CO2 and huge amounts of other greenhouse gasses such
as methane and nitrous oxides- when washed into shallow pools or down to
the coast this mix combines with salts in sunlight to produce conditions
perfect for toxic blue/green algae... poisoning the water for almost all
species and geometrically increasing the release of greenhouse gasses...
this flow on effect is a feature of natural systems in crisis. Erosion
related algal blooms occur at regular intervals in the northern Moreton
Bay Brisbane area where mangrove clearing has been carried out because
mangrove trees trap the mud and re-oxygenate the chemical soup. You may
want to consider what will happen when/if the huge areas of permafrost
tundra melt and commence to decay.

Soil in air generates dust hazes that greatly increase temperatures on
the ground enhancing potentials for fire and other carbon releasing
events. Airborne dust also contains Carbon, salts nitrates and
sulphurous compounds that increase greatly once this heat trap system
becomes pronounced in an environment. Exposure science and environmental
epidemiology research reveals that these environmental factors impact
greatly on health and wellbeing - hence the asthma and other respiratory
diseases related to air pollution, smoke and dust haze & the effect
these have on infant mortality etc.plus the every day anxiety or living
in such a clime - not to mention the impact these chemical mixes have on
other species-except for trees of course which slow the wind and enhance
the potential for dust to collect and fall to the ground and fertilize
their roots.

Without trees soil is blown or washed around until it is carbon depleted
- then we call it sand.

The farm where I lived as a three year old disappeared under salt
contamination in the 1960's because the removal of trees and irrigation
caused the water table to rise bringing ancient salts to the surface
producing a salt desert in that entire area ... by 2005 the planting of
specific tree species and drainage schemes were having some success in
limiting the spread of this devastation.

How do you get carbon and nitrous oxides back into soil? Well trees and
plants animals fall and die all the time and all organic matter rots
into soil through mainly fungal and bacterial agents that 'lock' (some
would say 'cook') carbon into soil through essentially 'digestive'
processes that reorganise the chemistry of plant matter so that mainly
heat, oxygen and nitrogen are released. Soil rich in these elements and
organisms in the correct pattern of relationship actually grows - as
well as supporting the growth of all other things - see the terra-negro
from the Amazon basin for example.

My good companion the scrub turkey is an excellent designer because he
uses the heat of this natural carbon cooking to incubate his eggs &
while doing this enhances the processes of carbon digestion. 

In Indigenous Knowledge (IK) terms the many different relational
patterns between plants and soil that you describe as environmental
types are not problematic or evidence to support environmental futures
in relation to CO2 sequestering in which trees are problematic. 

Indeed in IK terms these diverse patterns of relation between soil
plants and many other related species are evidence of the relational
intelligence of natural systems in a context. Each of these contexts is
inhabited by particular species that position themselves in very
specific patterns of inter-relationship. This positioning-in-relation
intelligence is a feature of layered and interconnected complex adaptive
systems (CAS) a positioning intelligence which occurs at and between
many levels in natural systems. Rose (1992) describes the Yarralin
(Indigenous Australian) description of this intelligence inherent to
natural systems as information equals action - action equals information
relations - (I=A ><A=I) R. 

This positioning intelligence ensures the contextual relevance or fit of
each species and its behaviour in the whole- from bacteria to giant
redwood - we experience such wholes as the environment of a place. These
different environments (shrubs/scrub; rainforest; mangrove; tundra etc.)
that exist in various places are evidence of this context relevant
positioning intelligence. What is significant in this relational
understanding is that not all of these relations are directly causal or
apparent - and they are intermeshed and relational so a movement in one
area generates other movements that are often emergent, non- sequential
and seemingly random - this is the complexity theory connection between
some modern science and IK.

Natural systems are replete with intelligent (I=A ><A=I) Relations.

I agree that many people are duped into funding tree farms for CO2
reasons hundreds of thousands of hectares of radiata pine plantations
are  environmentally devastating because monocultures are not
environments ...environments are contextually intelligent patterns of
relation which emerge from layered and interconnected Complex Adaptive
Systems (Sheehan 2004. Indeed the kind of knowing which works in these
contexts to sequester CO2 is the knowing of the scrub turkey - natural
systems have a positioning intelligence - IK relational science involves
working with this intelligence and learning how to provide the
conditions that position CAS species to interconnect themselves in the
relational patterns that will generate the environmental stability we
need ... of course this requires us to also position ourselves in
relation with these contexts and fundamentally change our behaviour (fat
chance!).

So from my perspective there are huge methodological problems with the
research you cite - these are evident in experimental processes that
delineate and contain contexts for measurement to produce value schema
related data - this works with discrete physical matter BUT environments
are layered and interconnected C A Systems ... delineation inherently
severs or ignores the essential & contextually intelligent patterns of
system relations. 

In short soil already contains carbon - carbon release through soil
disturbance is a major issue- positing that soil can be pumped up with
carbon must involve an understanding of the relational interconnections
within soils and the species that inhabit them- otherwise we are
generating new problems - in the same way existing problems were
generated (through a non-context relevant science). The environmentally
intelligent layered and interconnected CASystem already works to
maintain carbon balance in environments ... humans are actually the
problem ... we may proceed much further by learning how to mesh our
production based culture with this existing intelligence.

Norm

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Terence
Sent: Friday, 31 August 2007 12:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: dying trees

Hi Keith,

Figures on refuse flows show approximately the same amount of lumber
going
into landfill as is produced and used. The figures I have are for CCA
treated lumber. One would expect similar figures for untreated lumber.
Decay
in landfill sites is active. Gases are either vented or burned to create
electrical energy. Either way the CO2 is released.

Storage in built environment (houses etc)  is typically only of the
order of
decades; the proportion of wood  in building is relatively small in
developed countries; and creation of joinery and furniture timber is
relatively inefficient and with significant CO2 laden waste streams. One
friend who was a manager of a cabinet making works suggested their main
output was sawdust - the beautiful furniture happened as a by-product. 

The CO2 neutrality of wood can, however, also be seen as a blessing
where
electricity can be created from wood burned  in a tightly engineered
environment without releasing high levels of toxic chemicals. In that
case,
growing and burning wood offers  a relatively efficient solar conversion
process to electricity.

I thought everyone was into coal over your way?

Best regards,

Terry


-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Keith
Russell
Sent: Friday, 31 August 2007 6:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: dying trees

Dear Terry

It might be OK to say that in their slow dying trees give off the carbon
they have collected in one way or another. But, most fallen timber is
not
dead, it simply isn't growing.

Burying the trees, for example, can lock most of the carbon up and the
small
amount given off is mostly held by the soil. The 75 year old timbers in
my
house have held most of their carbon quite well for the 100 years since
the
trees started. They could keep doing that quite well for another 100
years
and then get buried and so on.

cheers

keith