pcplantdb

[Stephanie Gerson <sgerson@stanfordalumni.org>]

Re: linking up with Permaculture sites in other countries and potentially
involving GIS.  Jim Fournier asked specifically about that - creating a
network of Permaculture initiatives.  This could be an interesting path to
pursue (when we are ready) and could potentially be a source of further
funding.

And.  Imagine if we could create the software we develop in order to visually
represent the network of Permaculture sites (a la what we've been discussing
regarding the PlaNetwork meeting)?  Hmm.

peace
*Stephanie


------ Original Message ------
Received: 11:38 PM PST, 01/23/2005
From: Bear K <bear@ursine-design.com>
To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] Re: GIS

>>> A GIS expert helping us would be a very valuable resource, usually 
>>> hard to find
>>> for small projects and expensive (because of the high demand for GIS 
>>> services,
>>> prices are very high). I wonder if there is a family of opensource 
>>> GIS software
>>> products being developed?
>> I've looked into it to some degree, and it seems there is...
>> I can't pull all the links together right now...
>
> Thanks.
>
>> This might get you started:
>> http://opensourcegis.org/
>> Or the Virtual Terrian Project:
>> http://www.vterrain.org/
>
> Just looked at this URL. To quote them:
>
> "The goal of VTP is to foster the creation of tools for easily 
> constructing any part of the real world in interactive, 3D digital 
> form."
> and:
> "This goal will require a synergetic convergence of the fields of CAD, 
> GIS, visual simulation, surveying and remote sensing.  VTP gathers 
> information and tracks progress in areas such as procedural scene 
> construction, feature extraction, and rendering algorithms."
>
> If VTP can "easily constructing any part of the real world in 
> interactive, 3D digital form" with GIS coordinates for contour 
> mapping, etc.
> and present this data in 3D format, could it or some software derived 
> from it take "3 D" data, i.e. fauna/flora-habitat-environment 
> information and present it in some three dimensional way similar to 
> the way Touchgraph-like tools do? Say, if you (the user) could change 
> something represented in one of the three dimensions represented in 
> the image on your screen (like, for example change Johnson grass
> to pennyroyal) the data/image in the other two dimensions would change 
> correspondingly (and maybe sprout branches of data to indicate
> other possibilities for displaying relationships 3 dimensionally - 
> maybe a data fractal would emerge to entrance the user.
Well, it's a tough row to hoe, so to speak. It looks like there are 
tools on VTerrain that can model forests. There are some garden design 
applications that can model a garden layout in 3d (often using cutout 
2d images of plants, shaded, scaled, and placed based on their 3d 
positions) so not all 3d.
Anyway, it might be possible, but it's a major venture, in a rather 
different domain from a plant/design element database system. They 
definitely are keeping up with the technologies, but me thinks we're a 
few years off before systems like that are full fledged.

Also to note, Touchgraph isn't really 3d, but mimics some physics to 
make connections springy, which happens to be a reasonably efficient 
way to arrange connected nodes of a graph. I really like the tactile 
feel of these systems. Now I'm just trying to grok how we expand upon 
single property linkages to visualize more complex connections and 
networks.

> Related to my notion of using PIW DB and GIS for market farmers, 
> permaculturists and homesteaders is my notion of exploring plant 
> culture methods on farmland (gardening) where data on existing land 
> contours, land features, microclimates, drainage, exposure, land 
> features and slopes, existing plantings, edge zones and native 
> vegetation are cataloged and processed for graphical presentation of 
> possibilities for planting locations and cultural methods (raised 
> beds, row, orchard). I thought that with knowledge of this sort one 
> could try out
> exotic planting schemes such as permanent notill raised beds in 
> mandala and/or keyhole gardens laid out in a fractal pattern.
It does seem like it may be possible to take a Lat/Long point, and 
derive from it slope, aspect, average precip., temperature, 
photosynthesis, etc and perhaps pare down the suggested plants to match 
within their ranges, soil needs, etc. You'd probably want to use a 
ranking system on this, so the results were somewhat fuzzy. Don't want 
to completely exclude a potential plant based on roughly recorded 
range, etc. If we could connect to the USDA Plants DB, we could check a 
plant was ruled invasive in a state or county, so designers were aware 
of what to be cautious of. Found a few databases of GIS linked 
vegetation cover info today. Seems like there definitely are 
interesting projects out there, but how easy it is to meld and play 
with the data is another question.

> I have an array of exotic tractor tillage equipment that I can use to 
> create the beginnings of gardening systems of this sort. I am about 2 
> acres of intensively prepared, very weedy soil into it so far.

On another note, the OneVillage Foundation seems quite interesting. 
Creating eco-villages in Africa and elsewhere, bridging the digital 
divide, selling fairtrade products to boost the local economies, and I 
see mention of permaculture in one of the documents.

Something that I thought of when I was developing OpenPermaculture was 
that it would be really cool to link up with actual sites in 
"developing" countries, have a digital camera over there. Get photos of 
the site, have people back here study and research, and generally help 
in the design process via the net. It seems like this would be an 
interesting thing to play with. Not necessarily as part of our project, 
lets keep the scope reasonable :-) ...you'd develop an archive of the 
transformation of the site, get documented case studies, get research 
done, etc. There's actually a website doing something like this called 
Nabuur, see nabuur.com.

Also found http://www.thinkcycle.org/ out of MIT. Interesting projects 
and ideas if you feel like surfing for a bit. Might be interesting to 
post this project and goals, see what advice we get from there.

OK, tangental discussions.

Cheers,
Bear

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+++++++++++++++
Stephanie Gerson
sgerson@stanfordalumni.org
(c) 415.871.5683


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