Hi Jim. I would never be so bold as to say never! :-) I also think as a
community we too often burn time on realism when an image already achieves
an objective as art. I already like Norbert Kern's image as art.

IF, and only if, Norbert Kern's desire is a final image which more closely
matches nature do I think the plant and fungal life shown could be better
matched. There are patterns in nature which usually hold true.

I have a cousin who 3-4 years ago was part of a study in the western US
looking at whether grizzly bears could be re-introduced and survive. A large
part of this study needed to determine simply whether there was enough food
and the right kind of habitat for the bears. The region however covered
several large states and was impossible to survey with traditional ground
based methods.

She and the other members of her team very carefully catlogued plant life in
50 by 50 meters squares of land. They also borrowed from data from other
plant studies already done in the region to create 50 by 50 meter catalogued
regions with varying degrees of confidence depending upon the length of
time since the survey and so on.

They then matched satellite images taken taken with (IIRC) seven different
instruments measuring different emission spectra. You can already guess the
intent was to use covering satellite imagery for these huge western states
to predict what plant life existed in some detail and most importantly
whether there was adequate habitate for the grizzly bears.

After they built software models and made the predictions, they went into a
number of predicted locations to insure the plant life predicted by the
model from only the spectral information was actually found at those
locations.

The model of course already matched what it was constructed to match. After
further refinement they found predictions based only on satellite images was
agreeing well with what they would find on the ground at any given
location.

The only reason this method of cataloging life on the surface of our planet
from space works is that there are patterns in nature which almost always
hold true.

Certain plants grow in certain ways. Plants cohabitate with only certain
other plants, in certain densities and so on. There are regular patterns
just as there are certainly exceptions to every rule. :-)

Bill P.

Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:
> William Pokorny wrote:
>
> Really?  You believe that there is no possible combination of natural
> factors which affect top cover could ever possibly result in a localized
> stand such as this?  Soil makeup, mudslides, underground streams,
> windstorms, rainfall, flood, climate, season, light exposure, fire,
> pest, disease, plant interaction,...maybe because I am no naturalist,
> nature seems to allow more possibilities than I can usually account for.
>   I agree that with that much apparent light exposure it would likely
> not be so completely bereft of scrub or variety in tree size anywhere in
> the camera's view.  But while the relative openess and reduced range of
> species seems unusual to me, it does not seem impossible.

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