Field Trip 6/13/13

During this field trip at Lovers key it was very cool to walk around the beach and see everything the small island has to offer. The main part of the field  trip was our talk about what the strip of islands along the west coast of Florida has to offer. Not only does the islands offer a barrier from strong coastal winds but it provides an extremely beneficial bay area where tons of game fish come from see to lay their eggs. This drives our economy and fishing industry.

People from all over the world come to our beaches to go on fishing trips and this alone provides a great amount of revenue. A main part of why our bay area is so important is because of the mangroves that provide protection for these fish. The Red mangroves (or walking trees) provide excellent homes for these fish. This is because of the hanging branches that envelop an area where larger predator fish cannot enter. Not only do we have a large amount of game fish developing in our bay area but the shrimping industry is also excellent. I got a small glimpse of this walking out on the dock picture below. At this dock there were tons of schools of bait fish and under the dock there were very large snook and other fish.

Prompt 1

For my first prompt i chose chapter 5 out of the book "Plan B 4.0." I chose this chapter because as I am in pursuit of a degree in the field of engineering it is very important for the future of engineering to think about environmentally friendly ways to go about anything they are doing. This can be applied to just about anything such as the production of materials, and the pollutants this may give off. Energy sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal energy is especially important because of the harm fossil fuels and coals do to our society, not to mention the fact that our fossil fuels are non renewable and our worlds supply is depleting very quickly. 

The world needs to start to move towards a more reliable and renewable energy sources and the book has depicted this very well. In the book it says that the US coast lines has so much attainable wind energy that it could power the whole country. The book also said enough light hit earth each day to power the worlds economy for a whole year. Finally the amount of geothermal energy trapped in the earth is astronomical and the first 6 miles of the earths crust contains 50,000 times more energy then all the worlds oil and gas reserves combined.

Field Trip to ECHO May 30

On this field trip to ECHO it was very interesting to see the different types of irrigation and ways to grow the plants we had seen that day. There was as lot of cool stuff that they use at ECHO that is very beneficial to the world. They showed us ways to irrigate crops in places with very little water, ways to use natural gas grills using cow manure, seeds to sterilize water, and even crops that will grow essentially anywhere.
During the field trip there were a couple of things that stood out to me. One happened to be the moringa plant, also known as the miracle seed. This seed happens to purify water, which is very beneficial to areas with poor water conditions. It is also edible and contains a very large amount of vitamins and even contains more vitamin C than oranges pound for pound.
Another thing that also stood out to me was the irrigation system they used for the rice fields. Instead of a modern rice field where they clump the seeds very close together in groups of three and flood the field ECHO came up with a new technique in which they use one seed and space them out and they even use less water and don;t have to flood the field. They have tested this technique and the results have shown that this technique creates even more rice than the technique that is now being used very widely.
Also another cool thing was the tilapia pond. It was cool to know that these fish can live in ponds with very low oxygen levels. This is very useful for villages located in areas where there may be a very small pond with little oxygen and it will give them a food source with a large amount of vitamins.
Also the bunnies that are raised at ECHo can be very beneficial for a village as well. While bunnies don't require much food or water since they are so small they can populate an area very quickly. This means that the village can have a good source of protein and use the skin and other parts of the bunny for other uses. Also bunnies feces can be used for a good manure to help grow crops.

Class May 23

On this blog i wanted to reflect on the videos we watched in class.
It was pretty interesting to see the 3 different places around the world and the new things that were presented to us. To see the destruction that the human population has done to places like Africa, Vancouver, and even close to home Kansas, was really disturbing and really hit home. It is crazy to think about how the human population can be so greedy at times or even think they are helping places out by changing the plant life when it is really so destructive to that environment. Such as the places in Africa that were mentioned during the video.
When European settlers had thought they would be doing a good deed by planting seeds all across Africa but in reality these trees were stealing water from the native species and flowing rivers. Once some of the trees were cut down the rivers started to flow again and the native species and human could now live their daily lives without having to walk miles to a water supply. This can relate to us to because of how many invasive trees there are in florida such as the maliluka and brazilian pepper.
Also in Vancouver island how the they have switched from the destructive clear cutting that destroys the land and environment to a spot cutting technique. This technique requires surveyors to look over the land wanted to be cut. After approval a team comes in to chop the trees down while a helicopter starts to air lift the trees so they can be made into lumber. This relates to us because the lumber made from these trees are marked in stores as certified lumber and when a purchase for anything wood related, such as a deck, it is important to support the use of lumber that have not greatly affected the area from which it came from.
Lastly in the video we had seen the affects of pesticides in Kansas. As one farmer is trying to stray away from pesticides and focus on the nutrients and health of the land. He had mentioned that the soil had been stripped a large amount of top soil and nutrients since the dust bowl and wide spread use of strong pesticides. The pesticides are so strong in fact there is a dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi river and those pesticides flow into the gulf of mexico.