Claude
Green and Growing
Solar Sunspaces and Greenhouses. Dozens of free design guides and plans for dozens of sunspaces and greenhouses you can build. Attached sunspaces can be a good way to solar heat your house, provide some additional living space, plant growing space, a place to read the newspaper and look at the views, and a place to hang the laundry for solar drying. Very versatile and they look nice to boot. Sunspace designs vary widely depending on whether you want to 1) provide heat for the attached house, 2) provide more living space, or 3) grow plants, or some combination of the three. Be sure to review the guides below so that your design does what you want it to. One sunspace aspect that is not well covered in most of the sunspace guidelines is the desirability of a low thermal mass sunspace if your aim is to transfer a maximum amount of heat to the attached house -- see the low thermal mass sunspace entries below.
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Help. Natural Solutions. Sustainable farming grabs Silicon Valley's attention. Carbon sink. A carbon sink is a natural or artificial reservoir that accumulates and stores some carbon-containing chemical compound for an indefinite period. The process by which carbon sinks remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere is known as carbon sequestration. Public awareness of the significance of CO2 sinks has grown since passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which promotes their use as a form of carbon offset. There are also different strategies used to enhance this process. The natural sinks are: Absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans via physicochemical and biological processesPhotosynthesis by terrestrial plants Natural sinks are typically much larger than artificial sinks.
Carbon sources include: Fires (by combustion)Farmland (by animal respiration); there are proposals for improvements in farming practices to reverse this. Kyoto Protocol[edit] Some countries seek to trade emission rights in carbon emission markets, purchasing the unused carbon emission allowances of other countries. Biosequestration. Biosequestration is the capture and storage of the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by biological processes. This may be by increased photosynthesis (through practices such as reforestation / preventing deforestation and genetic engineering); by enhanced soil carbon trapping in agriculture; or by the use of algal bio sequestration (see algae bioreactor) to absorb the carbon dioxide emissions from coal, petroleum (oil) or natural gas-fired electricity generation.
Biosequestration as a natural process has occurred in the past, and was responsible for the formation of the extensive coal and oil deposits which are now being burned. The importance of plants in storing atmospheric carbon dioxide[edit] Kew Gardens Waterlily House. Recent year-to-year increase of atmospheric CO2 Reforestation, avoided deforestation and LULUCF[edit] Continent of Australia from space. Deforestation in Haiti. Satellite imaging has become crucial in obtaining data on levels of deforestation and reforestation. Carbon Farming Group. Practical Permaculture for Carbon Farmes.