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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl AT intrex.net>
  • To: piw AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [piw] [Fwd: Re: [pcplantdb] Re: GIS]
  • Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 01:48:40 -0800


Are there any homesteading gardeners in this list? Urban permaculture
homesteaders OK.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] Re: GIS
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 01:38:52 -0800
From: Lawrence F. London, Jr. <lfl AT intrex.net>
Reply-To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb AT lists.ibiblio.org>

Bear K wrote:
I'd also like to say it seemed like a very good event. Met and talked with quite a few interesting people. One person (Mark) works with a guy (@ onevillage.biz) who has done ecological GIS work in Kenya, etc and knows those systems very well. So good overlap with what Lawrence has been wanting.


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.

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.

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.

LL
--
L.F.London
lfl AT intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech





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