Sustained forests; sustained profits
Sustained forests; sustained profits
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A group forms within the county and surrounding areas. A part-time sales person sells a standard set of monitoring equipment. Miscellaneous equipment is also sold. Computer maps of the county are sold indicating monthly temperatures, precipitation, and other weather and climatological factors.
With membership comes special access to a web site. The site contains general information about weather, the climate, and the membership recruitment. Each member with paid dues gets access to the main part of the site which is a "news letter" giving increasingly precise information about the county from the information supplied by all of the participants, the members.
With purchase of one of the main stations, the sales person (or Weather Folks staff person) installs the station, determines the exact GPS location, slope, aspect, elevation, distance to trees or structures, terrain roughness, albedo … and other factors. These become independent variables in statistical analyses that are mad with auto-regression or similar techniques, continually improving an estimator as old data are dropped as necessary and new data and new equations substituted to gain improvements in estimating precipitation, temperatures, soil moisture, growing periods, planting dates, and horticultural planting zones.
The members of the Nature Folks interested in phenology are especially interested in correlating their observations with those of Weather Folks (who are usually members of both groups with membership discounts to either) and predicting natural occurrences such as leaf fall, flower blooming, migration, and egg laying.
Instruction manuals, computer maps and local summaries are sold along with standard texts and other books on weather (cloud formations, severe weather, etc.) with commissions. Field trips are held for members and The Tours Group arranges major tours to meteorological centers. Fees are charged for entering a weather contest (conducted on the Internet) and major prizes offered to winning members.
Research grants are sought, using the database that is progressively being built. This includes emphasizing the role of the "abiotic" elements in ecological systems, the climate at night (see Lunar Forces within The Trevey), probable wind speed and direction maps (as related to forest fires see The Fire Force, potential wind-energy fields, and to energy drains on wildlife,) and solar power collection sites in rough terrain, and runoff relations in variable terrain with variable cover. Variability will be controlled in insect studies (see The Butterfly Band). Special projects will be designed for improving estimates of fog drip and the effects of disturbed dew (by animals) vs. evaporation on plant germination and community development. Several demonstration weather stations are set up in the county and sales progress as vigorously as possible. The conservative estimates of annual financial net gains (without salary included) are:
The income seems sufficient to support one person for one-half year. The contacts with and support of other groups will be very important. The income may expand as the region expands and other counties become involved and services and equipment become more complex.
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Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.