Key map: potential solar energy capture of land around the world by natural vegetation

[Philip Bogdonoff]

Via Russ Conser: 

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=5271069836236575&id=100000008338598

This map may look boring, but I propose that it is profound. It is a global map of the difference between how much solar energy could have been captured by natural vegetation on each acre of Earth, and how much was actually captured. Red means we are leaving sunlight uncaught, and green means we're doing great. Note how on most of the land we live on and farm, it's all red. These red areas are where we plow up natural vegetation to farm and use current industrial methods. Just look at that tragedy of the American corn/soy belt.  

Several years ago I did some back-of-the-envelop math estimating that if you add up all the uncaught energy on just US crop land, it's about the same as all the fossil energy coal, oil and natural gas that we produce every year in the US. The numbers are mind boggling.  

I propose to you the Earth has no long term future until this map turns all green. In fact, a great index for how we're doing as stewards of life on Earth might simply be the sum of this difference across all land area tracked each year over time.

Explore the live map (and other data) here at openlandmap.org:  

https://www.openlandmap.org/#/?base=Stamen%20(OpenStreetMap)&center=32.8728,-3.7020&zoom=3.4099999999999997&opacity=100&layer=pnv_fapar_proba.v.annualdiff_d  

h/t: Ichsani Wheeler

[Jon Schull]

Anastasia,

Last week, you explained to me how local cooling all over the world did not necessarily imply global cooling (you explained that if the heat carried away from the surface doesn't radiate into space, it just ends up in the ocean or atmosphere.). 

But I've been meaning to ask:  

Your explanation pertains to evapotranspiration and perhaps to energy consumed by hoisting water to the tree canopy; but solar energy sequestered in biomass is genuine heat-prevention is it not?  Do we know the approximate magnitude of that effect?

jsc...@e-NABLE.org cell: 585-738-6696  skype:jonschull

Co-founder,  

e-NABLE: volunteers worldwide making free, 3D printed prosthetics

Innovation Fellow, JMK Innovation Fund

--
View this message at https://groups.google.com/a/googlegroups.com/d/msg/ecorestoration-alliance/topic-id/message-id
Our Intranet is at http://EcorestorationAlliance.net/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "EcoRestoration Alliance" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ecorestoration-al...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ecorestoration-alliance/CADBd-rmoL%2BG-OjzC9Eh1pkm1Nk%3Dc4Zh-fRGTOmi0csB%2BtBCNag%40mail.gmail.com.

[c.bi...@gmail.com]

Dear Russ/ Philip, its certainly a good map where one or two distrust cropping seasons, however, some area FAPAR maybe miss leading, especially continuous cropped areas where gaps b/w two crops is very short… all green in intensive systems does not mean all good, though capturing sunlight very well, but it’s just a continuous industrial ag…

 

 

 

Kind regards

-Chandra

 

Dr. Chandrashekhar M. BIRADAR

Country Director-India and Chief of Party-TOFI

CIFOR-ICRAF Asia Continental Program

1st Floor, C-Block, NASC Complex, DPS Marg, Pusa Campus, New Delhi-110012 (India)

C.Bi...@cgiar.org | +91-7319132666 | skype c.biradar | F | T

cifor.org | worldagroforestry.org  | foreststreesagroforestry.org | globallandscapesforum.org

            

CIFOR-ICRAF are CGIAR Research Centers

--

[Russ Speer]

Chandra,

Thanks for the "nuance". Industrial agriculture is definitely not a "good green".

Best,

Russ

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ecorestoration-alliance/01e501d821b1%24918c2b00%24b4a48100%24%40gmail.com.

[Anastassia Makarieva]

Your explanation pertains to evapotranspiration and perhaps to energy consumed by hoisting water to the tree canopy; but solar energy sequestered in biomass is genuine heat-prevention is it not?  Do we know the approximate magnitude of that effect?

Productivity of global biota, 100 GtC/year, with energy content of 42 kJ/gC, corresponds to a globally averaged energy flow of 0.3 W/m2. (Compare this to solar power 340 W/m2.) Even if we were sequestering carbon at full biospheric net productivity, by capturing energy in the organic matter we would be cooling the Earth directly by several times less than the current radiative forcing attributed to CO2 warms it, which is about 2 W/m2. Current global biotic sink of carbon is only 3 GtC/year, which would be 3% of 0.3 W/m2.

Anastassia

пн, 14 февр. 2022 г. в 19:48, Russ Speer <spee...@gmail.com>:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ecorestoration-alliance/CA%2B7mqYd0NGZzaDngXzHgaskUP%2BOWY3o7mzh%2BTYOkeVV3vinQhA%40mail.gmail.com.