Drones to detect wildfires

[Jochen Fromm-5]

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

-J.

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

-J.

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[Steve Smith]

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

-J.

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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[Steve Smith]

Marcus -

Very good point and I understand/agree ... The "chaining" of juniper to make (yet more) rangeland was just such an experiment and on my father's own district he was very spare with fire suppression, he did believe in as much "natural burn" as possible (until it threatened a timber-sale!).  I spent no end of weekends driving up and hiking in to where a snag had been hit by lightning and was alight to check to make sure it wasn't likely to trigger any kind of major burn in the area, and usually it didn't warrant any intervention if/when there were natural fuel breaks uphill/downwind that kept it contained.   He also gave ranchers more leeway with grazing if they themselves would "experiment" with different ideas about avoiding intense over-grazing with careful management of water, salt, augmented feed, etc.   He was definitely always "experimenting" and I think even learning from it *even* though by the time he was "done" he was DONE because the integrated up "lessons learned" and cultural shifts that he wasn't part of but had to respond to.  He retired around 1980 just as the first female regional forester became his boss's boss, a coincidence but nevertheless difficult and auspicious for him.  

My neoLuddite basis is driven somewhat by the extreme leverage our techno-industrial reality represents.  Up until the late 1990s I might have sounded more like Pieter regarding "evidence for climate change" and "technophilic optimism" in spite of working closely *with* LANL climate scientists at the time.   Between being on the (very) wrong side of that one, and being a vegetarian peacenik *supporting* Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD 1980-1990), I have my own shame/grief to process, which like a former smoker often leads to an acute judgemental view of those who haven't yet "seen the light".

Following that theme, I believe the more toxic versions of Politically Correct and Woke are roughly the same thing.   My father (again) quit smoking in his 40s (up to 3 packs a day) and became a rabid anti-smoker (albeit polite in public about it).   I suspect those most vocal about hating the haters may well have their own "hate problems".   We now have 3 levels of indirection with those who want to bully "the Woke" who are noted for "bullying the Bullies" who of course will bully anything they want to (including the Woke).  Scissors, Paper Stone!   Put that in your iterated Prisoner's Dilemma and smoke it?

My recent focus on Global Endogenous Existential Threats (nod to Merle) has made me aware of many factoids which support (confirmation bias, many of them I'm sure) my chagrin over the things I've thought were "good ideas" which in fact seem to be part of our "race to the bottom" or "race off the end of everything".   It started with Climate/Biosphere challenges but overlaps strongly into sociopoliticaleconomic systems.   Our global (and national) response to COVID, to the BLM protests (black lives, not Cliven Bundy & Sons).  There is *strong* hysteresis in our global systems, and our activities have (long since) become significant drivers and in general we (as individuals, as national/global policy makers, as techno-industrialists) tend to want to ignore (or more likely game) that.   See the Fossil Fuel Industry in the 60s looking forward gleefully to an ice-free Arctic, generated by the product of their profiteering...  

(gra)mumble,

 - Steve

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Yes, humans are often selfish and corrupt.   Humans often amplify their mistakes because it serves their purposes.   Nature, however, is purposeless in its violence.   Pick your poison.   

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 9:05 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus -

Very good point and I understand/agree ... The "chaining" of juniper to make (yet more) rangeland was just such an experiment and on my father's own district he was very spare with fire suppression, he did believe in as much "natural burn" as possible (until it threatened a timber-sale!).  I spent no end of weekends driving up and hiking in to where a snag had been hit by lightning and was alight to check to make sure it wasn't likely to trigger any kind of major burn in the area, and usually it didn't warrant any intervention if/when there were natural fuel breaks uphill/downwind that kept it contained.   He also gave ranchers more leeway with grazing if they themselves would "experiment" with different ideas about avoiding intense over-grazing with careful management of water, salt, augmented feed, etc.   He was definitely always "experimenting" and I think even learning from it *even* though by the time he was "done" he was DONE because the integrated up "lessons learned" and cultural shifts that he wasn't part of but had to respond to.  He retired around 1980 just as the first female regional forester became his boss's boss, a coincidence but nevertheless difficult and auspicious for him.  

My neoLuddite basis is driven somewhat by the extreme leverage our techno-industrial reality represents.  Up until the late 1990s I might have sounded more like Pieter regarding "evidence for climate change" and "technophilic optimism" in spite of working closely *with* LANL climate scientists at the time.   Between being on the (very) wrong side of that one, and being a vegetarian peacenik *supporting* Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD 1980-1990), I have my own shame/grief to process, which like a former smoker often leads to an acute judgemental view of those who haven't yet "seen the light".

Following that theme, I believe the more toxic versions of Politically Correct and Woke are roughly the same thing.   My father (again) quit smoking in his 40s (up to 3 packs a day) and became a rabid anti-smoker (albeit polite in public about it).   I suspect those most vocal about hating the haters may well have their own "hate problems".   We now have 3 levels of indirection with those who want to bully "the Woke" who are noted for "bullying the Bullies" who of course will bully anything they want to (including the Woke).  Scissors, Paper Stone!   Put that in your iterated Prisoner's Dilemma and smoke it?

My recent focus on Global Endogenous Existential Threats (nod to Merle) has made me aware of many factoids which support (confirmation bias, many of them I'm sure) my chagrin over the things I've thought were "good ideas" which in fact seem to be part of our "race to the bottom" or "race off the end of everything".   It started with Climate/Biosphere challenges but overlaps strongly into sociopoliticaleconomic systems.   Our global (and national) response to COVID, to the BLM protests (black lives, not Cliven Bundy & Sons).  There is *strong* hysteresis in our global systems, and our activities have (long since) become significant drivers and in general we (as individuals, as national/global policy makers, as techno-industrialists) tend to want to ignore (or more likely game) that.   See the Fossil Fuel Industry in the 60s looking forward gleefully to an ice-free Arctic, generated by the product of their profiteering...  

(gra)mumble,

 - Steve

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
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twitter: @merle110

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Yep, reverse engineering nanomachines so that they can be controlled. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:54 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

 

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

It's a bit more than mere reverse engineering. They have created organisms with extended DNA coding, using more than the G, T C and A molecules to have entirely new life forms.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/23/organisms-created-with-synthetic-dna-pave-way-for-new-entirely-new-life-forms

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 20:01, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yep, reverse engineering nanomachines so that they can be controlled. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:54 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

 

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Thanks for the definition.  When it comes to regenerative agriculture and forestry, there is no human creation of "new biological parts" or "redesign" in a technological sense.  It's about just stopping what we're doing now which is making things worse, and joining nature in supporting its ability to heal itself after human assault.  I agree not enough mind-sets have changed yet from routinely referencing our present industrial civilization's need to control, repare, manipulate --to understanding a different way of living on Earth so our species might survive.  At the same time, there are those (mostly young) who are part of a growing understanding of how to discovder a (perhaps former) sustainable relationship with our living systems.

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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Center for Emergent Diplomacy
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mobile:  [phone]
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Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
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twitter: @merle110

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[Stephen Guerin-5]

 I don't think drones aren't an efficient choice for detection. Stationary PTZ cameras on ridgetops and citizen phone camera reporting along with 911 calls are soon enough. Where drones are valuable preliminary mapping to fill in gaps of existing camera viewsheds to get an early sizeup.

We are working with www.alertwildfire.org to calibrate their 1000 cameras on the ridgetops in the 5 western states of CA, OR, WA, ID and NV. Our bit is solving for camera pose based on observations of stars to solve for the 9 degrees of freedom of a camera (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, roll, horiz field of view, vert field of view and lens distortion)

You can see a map of the cameras that we have robotic control of hear with historical imagery:
    http://www.alertwildfire.org/tahoe/index.html?camera=Axis-SodaRidge1&v=7a7f1c3

Once a camera is calibrated each pixel maps to a lat/long if it intersects the terrain or triangulating 3D points with multiple cameras for sky-based features. 

You can see how we detect locations of fire starts after lightning strikes on the LNU Complex last summer in Sonama here:
    https://youtu.be/oVAwvs4k1n0

All compute and modeling/sim is in the browser with the camera projections using WebGL and rendering to 3D terrain.

And how we track perimeters on this example Adams Fire here:
    https://youtu.be/lP7-UhZQ4IY

And here is some live AI looking for smoke in Sonoma that we then map:
   https://fire.aiir.ai/sonoma

We can also calibrate ad hoc imagery coming from citizens based on common features in already calibrated images or by geopoints or the stars. Here's an example on the Maria Fire where we took imagery from Twitter from a private pilot and a second imager from citizen near the freeway.
   https://youtu.be/aJpgDzFhXng

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

What constitutes an “understanding”?   To truly understand a system one must manipulate it and make it do different things.   A model is only as good as experience.   And frankly our species is getting a little long in the tooth, anyway.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 11:16 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Thanks for the definition.  When it comes to regenerative agriculture and forestry, there is no human creation of "new biological parts" or "redesign" in a technological sense.  It's about just stopping what we're doing now which is making things worse, and joining nature in supporting its ability to heal itself after human assault.  I agree not enough mind-sets have changed yet from routinely referencing our present industrial civilization's need to control, repare, manipulate --to understanding a different way of living on Earth so our species might survive.  At the same time, there are those (mostly young) who are part of a growing understanding of how to discovder a (perhaps former) sustainable relationship with our living systems.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

 

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Very impressive, Stephen.

On Tue, May 25, 2021, 12:23 PM Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

 I don't think drones aren't an efficient choice for detection. Stationary PTZ cameras on ridgetops and citizen phone camera reporting along with 911 calls are soon enough. Where drones are valuable preliminary mapping to fill in gaps of existing camera viewsheds to get an early sizeup.

We are working with www.alertwildfire.org to calibrate their 1000 cameras on the ridgetops in the 5 western states of CA, OR, WA, ID and NV. Our bit is solving for camera pose based on observations of stars to solve for the 9 degrees of freedom of a camera (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, roll, horiz field of view, vert field of view and lens distortion)

You can see a map of the cameras that we have robotic control of hear with historical imagery:
    http://www.alertwildfire.org/tahoe/index.html?camera=Axis-SodaRidge1&v=7a7f1c3

Once a camera is calibrated each pixel maps to a lat/long if it intersects the terrain or triangulating 3D points with multiple cameras for sky-based features. 

You can see how we detect locations of fire starts after lightning strikes on the LNU Complex last summer in Sonama here:
    https://youtu.be/oVAwvs4k1n0

All compute and modeling/sim is in the browser with the camera projections using WebGL and rendering to 3D terrain.

And how we track perimeters on this example Adams Fire here:
    https://youtu.be/lP7-UhZQ4IY

And here is some live AI looking for smoke in Sonoma that we then map:
   https://fire.aiir.ai/sonoma

We can also calibrate ad hoc imagery coming from citizens based on common features in already calibrated images or by geopoints or the stars. Here's an example on the Maria Fire where we took imagery from Twitter from a private pilot and a second imager from citizen near the freeway.
   https://youtu.be/aJpgDzFhXng

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Steve Smith]

As Stephen already knows well, *these* were in all of the lookout towers before modern tech finally meant humans didn't need to man them 24/7 during fire season.   A precision, calibrated "lazy susan" with a map and a "protractor" for measuring altitude angle to a fire.  The Simtable work Stephen describes is a highly efficient and accurate replacement for this art/skill (and beyond), even before the citizen-mobile cameras are integrated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Fire_Finder

   I knew quite a few permanent and short term (usually college summer students) fire lookouts in my time.   The permanent folks got to know their territory like the back of their hands, as well as the other lookouts and the local fire crews.   My dad had a fire-radio in our dining room that ran 24/7 during fire season as well.   It would have been fascinating if it hadn't been so "normal" at the time.

I very much appreciate Stephen's Schtick about fires (and other natural threats/disasters) being much more frightening/threatening when you don't know where they are and what they are doing, and that good (collective) awareness is the first step toward "managing" not only the wildfires themselves, but the people and property they threaten.  

The same thing goes for "managing" nature in a broader sense.  The more we know what is actually happening in the short and long term, the better chance we have of doing something clever, or ... wait for it...  maybe even "wise"?   What Merle and I are vying for is an appreciation that this ~10,000 year old experiment of humans manipulating the biosphere with significant (and exponentially growing?) leverage has not gone well (for the biosphere).  While First World peoples, especially in the 1% (or even 50%) wealth category, it all might seem plenty peachy, but if you ask the myriad folks (and non-human folks) that are enduring the unintended (usually) consequences of our arrogant mucking about, they might not be so proud of what we have done. 

When the chickens (refugees) come home to roost (Europe dealing with those displaced by climate change and war throughout north Africa and the Middle east, the US dealing with Central American refugees, etc ad nauseum) some of us struggle to figure out how to accommodate them without giving up "too much" while others simply identify them as a dangerous, foreign, plague to be repelled or exterminated.   Whether the former OR the latter is even possible is up in the air, but in the meantime, we continue to either stick with "business as usual" or "rush forward to the next grande technological (and highly profitable for *someone*) fix without honestly considering the meta-problem of whether we really *learn* anything from our mistakes (experiments) except how to be more efficient at executing the narrow goals we set for ourselves.   Optimization run amok?  

I shouldn't be so negative... I know *many* people are honestly trying to expand their awareness to include that which they were not previously aware of, not just double down on being more effective at whatever they set out to be effective at earlier in life (as individuals or as cultures).

I accept (reluctantly) the truism that "the only way out is through".   There is huge momentum in the human project, or more to the point, the Homo Faber project.  Man the Maker.   Sapiens means knowledgeable or wise,  I do believe we've done a fair job of  living up to the former, I think the latter is very much a work in progress.  

Meanwhile, pedal-to-the-medal, drill-baby-drill, burn baby burn, gangway, don't look down (or back)!

On 5/25/21 12:22 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

 I don't think drones aren't an efficient choice for detection. Stationary PTZ cameras on ridgetops and citizen phone camera reporting along with 911 calls are soon enough. Where drones are valuable preliminary mapping to fill in gaps of existing camera viewsheds to get an early sizeup.

We are working with www.alertwildfire.org to calibrate their 1000 cameras on the ridgetops in the 5 western states of CA, OR, WA, ID and NV. Our bit is solving for camera pose based on observations of stars to solve for the 9 degrees of freedom of a camera (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, roll, horiz field of view, vert field of view and lens distortion)

You can see a map of the cameras that we have robotic control of hear with historical imagery:
    http://www.alertwildfire.org/tahoe/index.html?camera=Axis-SodaRidge1&v=7a7f1c3

Once a camera is calibrated each pixel maps to a lat/long if it intersects the terrain or triangulating 3D points with multiple cameras for sky-based features. 

You can see how we detect locations of fire starts after lightning strikes on the LNU Complex last summer in Sonama here:
    https://youtu.be/oVAwvs4k1n0

All compute and modeling/sim is in the browser with the camera projections using WebGL and rendering to 3D terrain.

And how we track perimeters on this example Adams Fire here:
    https://youtu.be/lP7-UhZQ4IY

And here is some live AI looking for smoke in Sonoma that we then map:
   https://fire.aiir.ai/sonoma

We can also calibrate ad hoc imagery coming from citizens based on common features in already calibrated images or by geopoints or the stars. Here's an example on the Maria Fire where we took imagery from Twitter from a private pilot and a second imager from citizen near the freeway.
   https://youtu.be/aJpgDzFhXng

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Pieter Steenekamp]

I don't question the historical link between human progress and hurting the environment. Within walking distance from where I live there is a cave where archaeologists led by Curtis Marean found evidence of modern humans that lived 162 000 years ago. Curtis opines that since then modern humans behaved like an invasive species, causing serious harm to the environment wherever they went. My point is that there is evidence that this human progress/harming the environment link has been happening ever since modern humans set their feet on mother earth and it's still happening. 

But my subjective observation is that the attitude of pedal-to-the-medal, drill-baby-drill, burn baby burn, gangway, don't look down (or back)! is changing and it's changing very fast. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I compare the attitude of people when I was young to now, I observe a big difference. There is now a very widespread concern for the environment that was absent when I was young.  I salute the environmental activists, they have done a great job and are still doing a great job in changing the moral values of society to be against hurting the environment.

Personally I am both enthusiastically for human progress and totally against hurting the environment. 

I have open questions:
1. Admitting that progress hurt the environment in the past, is there reason to believe that it's impossible to have future progress without hurting the environment?
2. Provided it's possible without hurting the environment, is there anything wrong with human progress?   

On Wed, 26 May 2021 at 03:45, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

As Stephen already knows well, *these* were in all of the lookout towers before modern tech finally meant humans didn't need to man them 24/7 during fire season.   A precision, calibrated "lazy susan" with a map and a "protractor" for measuring altitude angle to a fire.  The Simtable work Stephen describes is a highly efficient and accurate replacement for this art/skill (and beyond), even before the citizen-mobile cameras are integrated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Fire_Finder

   I knew quite a few permanent and short term (usually college summer students) fire lookouts in my time.   The permanent folks got to know their territory like the back of their hands, as well as the other lookouts and the local fire crews.   My dad had a fire-radio in our dining room that ran 24/7 during fire season as well.   It would have been fascinating if it hadn't been so "normal" at the time.

I very much appreciate Stephen's Schtick about fires (and other natural threats/disasters) being much more frightening/threatening when you don't know where they are and what they are doing, and that good (collective) awareness is the first step toward "managing" not only the wildfires themselves, but the people and property they threaten.  

The same thing goes for "managing" nature in a broader sense.  The more we know what is actually happening in the short and long term, the better chance we have of doing something clever, or ... wait for it...  maybe even "wise"?   What Merle and I are vying for is an appreciation that this ~10,000 year old experiment of humans manipulating the biosphere with significant (and exponentially growing?) leverage has not gone well (for the biosphere).  While First World peoples, especially in the 1% (or even 50%) wealth category, it all might seem plenty peachy, but if you ask the myriad folks (and non-human folks) that are enduring the unintended (usually) consequences of our arrogant mucking about, they might not be so proud of what we have done. 

When the chickens (refugees) come home to roost (Europe dealing with those displaced by climate change and war throughout north Africa and the Middle east, the US dealing with Central American refugees, etc ad nauseum) some of us struggle to figure out how to accommodate them without giving up "too much" while others simply identify them as a dangerous, foreign, plague to be repelled or exterminated.   Whether the former OR the latter is even possible is up in the air, but in the meantime, we continue to either stick with "business as usual" or "rush forward to the next grande technological (and highly profitable for *someone*) fix without honestly considering the meta-problem of whether we really *learn* anything from our mistakes (experiments) except how to be more efficient at executing the narrow goals we set for ourselves.   Optimization run amok?  

I shouldn't be so negative... I know *many* people are honestly trying to expand their awareness to include that which they were not previously aware of, not just double down on being more effective at whatever they set out to be effective at earlier in life (as individuals or as cultures).

I accept (reluctantly) the truism that "the only way out is through".   There is huge momentum in the human project, or more to the point, the Homo Faber project.  Man the Maker.   Sapiens means knowledgeable or wise,  I do believe we've done a fair job of  living up to the former, I think the latter is very much a work in progress.  

Meanwhile, pedal-to-the-medal, drill-baby-drill, burn baby burn, gangway, don't look down (or back)!

On 5/25/21 12:22 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

 I don't think drones aren't an efficient choice for detection. Stationary PTZ cameras on ridgetops and citizen phone camera reporting along with 911 calls are soon enough. Where drones are valuable preliminary mapping to fill in gaps of existing camera viewsheds to get an early sizeup.

We are working with www.alertwildfire.org to calibrate their 1000 cameras on the ridgetops in the 5 western states of CA, OR, WA, ID and NV. Our bit is solving for camera pose based on observations of stars to solve for the 9 degrees of freedom of a camera (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, roll, horiz field of view, vert field of view and lens distortion)

You can see a map of the cameras that we have robotic control of hear with historical imagery:
    http://www.alertwildfire.org/tahoe/index.html?camera=Axis-SodaRidge1&v=7a7f1c3

Once a camera is calibrated each pixel maps to a lat/long if it intersects the terrain or triangulating 3D points with multiple cameras for sky-based features. 

You can see how we detect locations of fire starts after lightning strikes on the LNU Complex last summer in Sonama here:
    https://youtu.be/oVAwvs4k1n0

All compute and modeling/sim is in the browser with the camera projections using WebGL and rendering to 3D terrain.

And how we track perimeters on this example Adams Fire here:
    https://youtu.be/lP7-UhZQ4IY

And here is some live AI looking for smoke in Sonoma that we then map:
   https://fire.aiir.ai/sonoma

We can also calibrate ad hoc imagery coming from citizens based on common features in already calibrated images or by geopoints or the stars. Here's an example on the Maria Fire where we took imagery from Twitter from a private pilot and a second imager from citizen near the freeway.
   https://youtu.be/aJpgDzFhXng

_______________________________________________________________________
[hidden email]

CEO, Simtable  http://www.simtable.com

1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505

office: [phone] mobile: [phone]

twitter: @simtable

zoom.simtable.com

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

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[Prof David West]

The problem is the term " progress."

First, progress implies a goal state,as in progress towards what?

The second is teasing out a thread, a sequence of a single factor in a complex data set, and deciding that an increase in the measured value of that factor is what defines progress. [The term progress itself biases against looking for a decrease in some measured factor.]

For example: We could look at human beings in the U.S. from 1776 to today as a sequence of states. We could then look at the state and pick a variable that changes  — increases  — in each successive state. If the variable we pick is 'average lifespan' then we might be tempted to say that we have progressed. But if we picked the variable 'average BMI index' then it becomes problematic as to whether or not we can claim massive obesity is "progress."

A third issue is obtaining any kind of consensus as to which variables we should pick to measure progress. Kilotons of nuclear arsenals? Petabytes of video on Pornhub? Tons of food waste from restaurants per day? Average wheat yield in Kansas per year? Number of pure electric cars per capita?

davew

On Wed, May 26, 2021, at 1:00 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

I don't question the historical link between human progress and hurting the environment. Within walking distance from where I live there is a cave where archaeologists led by Curtis Marean found evidence of modern humans that lived 162 000 years ago. Curtis opines that since then modern humans behaved like an invasive species, causing serious harm to the environment wherever they went. My point is that there is evidence that this human progress/harming the environment link has been happening ever since modern humans set their feet on mother earth and it's still happening. 

But my subjective observation is that the attitude of pedal-to-the-medal, drill-baby-drill, burn baby burn, gangway, don't look down (or back)! is changing and it's changing very fast. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I compare the attitude of people when I was young to now, I observe a big difference. There is now a very widespread concern for the environment that was absent when I was young.  I salute the environmental activists, they have done a great job and are still doing a great job in changing the moral values of society to be against hurting the environment.

Personally I am both enthusiastically for human progress and totally against hurting the environment. 

I have open questions:

1. Admitting that progress hurt the environment in the past, is there reason to believe that it's impossible to have future progress without hurting the environment?

2. Provided it's possible without hurting the environment, is there anything wrong with human progress?   

On Wed, 26 May 2021 at 03:45, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

As Stephen already knows well, *these* were in all of the lookout towers before modern tech finally meant humans didn't need to man them 24/7 during fire season.   A precision, calibrated "lazy susan" with a map and a "protractor" for measuring altitude angle to a fire.  The Simtable work Stephen describes is a highly efficient and accurate replacement for this art/skill (and beyond), even before the citizen-mobile cameras are integrated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Fire_Finder

   I knew quite a few permanent and short term (usually college summer students) fire lookouts in my time.   The permanent folks got to know their territory like the back of their hands, as well as the other lookouts and the local fire crews.   My dad had a fire-radio in our dining room that ran 24/7 during fire season as well.   It would have been fascinating if it hadn't been so "normal" at the time.

I very much appreciate Stephen's Schtick about fires (and other natural threats/disasters) being much more frightening/threatening when you don't know where they are and what they are doing, and that good (collective) awareness is the first step toward "managing" not only the wildfires themselves, but the people and property they threaten.  

The same thing goes for "managing" nature in a broader sense.  The more we know what is actually happening in the short and long term, the better chance we have of doing something clever, or ... wait for it...  maybe even "wise"?   What Merle and I are vying for is an appreciation that this ~10,000 year old experiment of humans manipulating the biosphere with significant (and exponentially growing?) leverage has not gone well (for the biosphere).  While First World peoples, especially in the 1% (or even 50%) wealth category, it all might seem plenty peachy, but if you ask the myriad folks (and non-human folks) that are enduring the unintended (usually) consequences of our arrogant mucking about, they might not be so proud of what we have done. 

When the chickens (refugees) come home to roost (Europe dealing with those displaced by climate change and war throughout north Africa and the Middle east, the US dealing with Central American refugees, etc ad nauseum) some of us struggle to figure out how to accommodate them without giving up "too much" while others simply identify them as a dangerous, foreign, plague to be repelled or exterminated.   Whether the former OR the latter is even possible is up in the air, but in the meantime, we continue to either stick with "business as usual" or "rush forward to the next grande technological (and highly profitable for *someone*) fix without honestly considering the meta-problem of whether we really *learn* anything from our mistakes (experiments) except how to be more efficient at executing the narrow goals we set for ourselves.   Optimization run amok?  

I shouldn't be so negative... I know *many* people are honestly trying to expand their awareness to include that which they were not previously aware of, not just double down on being more effective at whatever they set out to be effective at earlier in life (as individuals or as cultures).

I accept (reluctantly) the truism that "the only way out is through".   There is huge momentum in the human project, or more to the point, the Homo Faber project.  Man the Maker.   Sapiens means knowledgeable or wise,  I do believe we've done a fair job of  living up to the former, I think the latter is very much a work in progress.  

Meanwhile, pedal-to-the-medal, drill-baby-drill, burn baby burn, gangway, don't look down (or back)!

On 5/25/21 12:22 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

 I don't think drones aren't an efficient choice for detection. Stationary PTZ cameras on ridgetops and citizen phone camera reporting along with 911 calls are soon enough. Where drones are valuable preliminary mapping to fill in gaps of existing camera viewsheds to get an early sizeup.

We are working with www.alertwildfire.org to calibrate their 1000 cameras on the ridgetops in the 5 western states of CA, OR, WA, ID and NV. Our bit is solving for camera pose based on observations of stars to solve for the 9 degrees of freedom of a camera (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, roll, horiz field of view, vert field of view and lens distortion)

You can see a map of the cameras that we have robotic control of hear with historical imagery:

    http://www.alertwildfire.org/tahoe/index.html?camera=Axis-SodaRidge1&v=7a7f1c3

Once a camera is calibrated each pixel maps to a lat/long if it intersects the terrain or triangulating 3D points with multiple cameras for sky-based features. 

You can see how we detect locations of fire starts after lightning strikes on the LNU Complex last summer in Sonama here:

    https://youtu.be/oVAwvs4k1n0

All compute and modeling/sim is in the browser with the camera projections using WebGL and rendering to 3D terrain.

And how we track perimeters on this example Adams Fire here:

    https://youtu.be/lP7-UhZQ4IY

And here is some live AI looking for smoke in Sonoma that we then map:

   https://fire.aiir.ai/sonoma

We can also calibrate ad hoc imagery coming from citizens based on common features in already calibrated images or by geopoints or the stars. Here's an example on the Maria Fire where we took imagery from Twitter from a private pilot and a second imager from citizen near the freeway.

   https://youtu.be/aJpgDzFhXng

_______________________________________________________________________

[hidden email]

CEO, Simtable  http://www.simtable.com

1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505

office: [phone] mobile: [phone]

twitter: @simtable

zoom.simtable.com

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff

Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith

Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.

Center for Emergent Diplomacy

emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.

Center for Emergent Diplomacy

emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

If the earth becomes unhabitable without changing how we live is that a problem?

Maybe this “harm” is just what it takes to motivate action.   Like it took COVID to bring mRNA vaccines to the forefront.  

A minority of people sitting around a campfire isn’t going to change the global outcome, if the pattern above is how human cognition works on average. 

The procedure then is that 1) the majority really screw things up, and 2) science comes to rescue to sort their mess out.   It only makes sense to arrange that #2 be very profitable.   If anything, remediation of our worst impulses isn’t profitable enough.

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2021 7:36 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

The problem is the term " progress."

 

First, progress implies a goal state,as in progress towards what?

 

The second is teasing out a thread, a sequence of a single factor in a complex data set, and deciding that an increase in the measured value of that factor is what defines progress. [The term progress itself biases against looking for a decrease in some measured factor.]

 

For example: We could look at human beings in the U.S. from 1776 to today as a sequence of states. We could then look at the state and pick a variable that changes  — increases  — in each successive state. If the variable we pick is 'average lifespan' then we might be tempted to say that we have progressed. But if we picked the variable 'average BMI index' then it becomes problematic as to whether or not we can claim massive obesity is "progress."

 

A third issue is obtaining any kind of consensus as to which variables we should pick to measure progress. Kilotons of nuclear arsenals? Petabytes of video on Pornhub? Tons of food waste from restaurants per day? Average wheat yield in Kansas per year? Number of pure electric cars per capita?

 

davew

 

 

On Wed, May 26, 2021, at 1:00 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

I don't question the historical link between human progress and hurting the environment. Within walking distance from where I live there is a cave where archaeologists led by Curtis Marean found evidence of modern humans that lived 162 000 years ago. Curtis opines that since then modern humans behaved like an invasive species, causing serious harm to the environment wherever they went. My point is that there is evidence that this human progress/harming the environment link has been happening ever since modern humans set their feet on mother earth and it's still happening. 

 

But my subjective observation is that the attitude of pedal-to-the-medal, drill-baby-drill, burn baby burn, gangway, don't look down (or back)! is changing and it's changing very fast. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I compare the attitude of people when I was young to now, I observe a big difference. There is now a very widespread concern for the environment that was absent when I was young.  I salute the environmental activists, they have done a great job and are still doing a great job in changing the moral values of society to be against hurting the environment.

 

Personally I am both enthusiastically for human progress and totally against hurting the environment. 

 

I have open questions:

1. Admitting that progress hurt the environment in the past, is there reason to believe that it's impossible to have future progress without hurting the environment?

2. Provided it's possible without hurting the environment, is there anything wrong with human progress?   

 

On Wed, 26 May 2021 at 03:45, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

As Stephen already knows well, *these* were in all of the lookout towers before modern tech finally meant humans didn't need to man them 24/7 during fire season.   A precision, calibrated "lazy susan" with a map and a "protractor" for measuring altitude angle to a fire.  The Simtable work Stephen describes is a highly efficient and accurate replacement for this art/skill (and beyond), even before the citizen-mobile cameras are integrated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Fire_Finder

   I knew quite a few permanent and short term (usually college summer students) fire lookouts in my time.   The permanent folks got to know their territory like the back of their hands, as well as the other lookouts and the local fire crews.   My dad had a fire-radio in our dining room that ran 24/7 during fire season as well.   It would have been fascinating if it hadn't been so "normal" at the time.

I very much appreciate Stephen's Schtick about fires (and other natural threats/disasters) being much more frightening/threatening when you don't know where they are and what they are doing, and that good (collective) awareness is the first step toward "managing" not only the wildfires themselves, but the people and property they threaten.  

The same thing goes for "managing" nature in a broader sense.  The more we know what is actually happening in the short and long term, the better chance we have of doing something clever, or ... wait for it...  maybe even "wise"?   What Merle and I are vying for is an appreciation that this ~10,000 year old experiment of humans manipulating the biosphere with significant (and exponentially growing?) leverage has not gone well (for the biosphere).  While First World peoples, especially in the 1% (or even 50%) wealth category, it all might seem plenty peachy, but if you ask the myriad folks (and non-human folks) that are enduring the unintended (usually) consequences of our arrogant mucking about, they might not be so proud of what we have done. 

When the chickens (refugees) come home to roost (Europe dealing with those displaced by climate change and war throughout north Africa and the Middle east, the US dealing with Central American refugees, etc ad nauseum) some of us struggle to figure out how to accommodate them without giving up "too much" while others simply identify them as a dangerous, foreign, plague to be repelled or exterminated.   Whether the former OR the latter is even possible is up in the air, but in the meantime, we continue to either stick with "business as usual" or "rush forward to the next grande technological (and highly profitable for *someone*) fix without honestly considering the meta-problem of whether we really *learn* anything from our mistakes (experiments) except how to be more efficient at executing the narrow goals we set for ourselves.   Optimization run amok?  

I shouldn't be so negative... I know *many* people are honestly trying to expand their awareness to include that which they were not previously aware of, not just double down on being more effective at whatever they set out to be effective at earlier in life (as individuals or as cultures).

I accept (reluctantly) the truism that "the only way out is through".   There is huge momentum in the human project, or more to the point, the Homo Faber project.  Man the Maker.   Sapiens means knowledgeable or wise,  I do believe we've done a fair job of  living up to the former, I think the latter is very much a work in progress.  

Meanwhile, pedal-to-the-medal, drill-baby-drill, burn baby burn, gangway, don't look down (or back)!

On 5/25/21 12:22 PM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

 I don't think drones aren't an efficient choice for detection. Stationary PTZ cameras on ridgetops and citizen phone camera reporting along with 911 calls are soon enough. Where drones are valuable preliminary mapping to fill in gaps of existing camera viewsheds to get an early sizeup.

 

We are working with www.alertwildfire.org to calibrate their 1000 cameras on the ridgetops in the 5 western states of CA, OR, WA, ID and NV. Our bit is solving for camera pose based on observations of stars to solve for the 9 degrees of freedom of a camera (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, roll, horiz field of view, vert field of view and lens distortion)

 

You can see a map of the cameras that we have robotic control of hear with historical imagery:

    http://www.alertwildfire.org/tahoe/index.html?camera=Axis-SodaRidge1&v=7a7f1c3

 

Once a camera is calibrated each pixel maps to a lat/long if it intersects the terrain or triangulating 3D points with multiple cameras for sky-based features. 

 

You can see how we detect locations of fire starts after lightning strikes on the LNU Complex last summer in Sonama here:

    https://youtu.be/oVAwvs4k1n0

 

All compute and modeling/sim is in the browser with the camera projections using WebGL and rendering to 3D terrain.

 

And how we track perimeters on this example Adams Fire here:

    https://youtu.be/lP7-UhZQ4IY

 

And here is some live AI looking for smoke in Sonoma that we then map:

   https://fire.aiir.ai/sonoma

 

We can also calibrate ad hoc imagery coming from citizens based on common features in already calibrated images or by geopoints or the stars. Here's an example on the Maria Fire where we took imagery from Twitter from a private pilot and a second imager from citizen near the freeway.

   https://youtu.be/aJpgDzFhXng

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________

[hidden email]

CEO, Simtable  http://www.simtable.com

 

1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505

office: [phone] mobile: [phone]

twitter: @simtable

zoom.simtable.com

 

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:54 AM Pieter Steenekamp <[hidden email]> wrote:

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

 

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.

It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad range of methodologies from various disciplines, such as biotechnology, genetic engineering, molecular biology, molecular engineering, systems biology, membrane science, biophysics, chemical and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, control engineering and evolutionary biology.

Due to more powerful genetic engineering capabilities and decreased DNA synthesis and sequencing costs, the field of synthetic biology is rapidly growing. In 2016, more than 350 companies across 40 countries were actively engaged in synthetic biology applications; all these companies had an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion in the global market.^[1]

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 19:49, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, I don't understand your term "synthetic biology."

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 10:24 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

So we move from chemical engineering to synthetic biology.   There will always be mistakes. 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff

Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:05 AM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

Marcus, we've been "experimenting" with our terrestrial biome for at least 10-12,000 years (when the first spade hit the ground).  The time for more experiments is over....unless they are experiments that help us understand even more deeply how to restore the Mycelium networks so that the fungi can solve our climate change challenge.  This is perhaps the most important task that will save us from extinction.  See Merlin Sheldrake's book, "Entangled Life" for explanation.

 

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 8:41 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith

Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM

To: [hidden email]

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

 

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

 

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

 

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

 

-J.

 

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--

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.

Center for Emergent Diplomacy

emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

 

mobile:  [phone]

skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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--

 

Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.

Center for Emergent Diplomacy

emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

 

mobile:  [phone]

skype:  merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @merle110

 

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