During ANR Week 1999, the Agricultural Engineering Department and the Precision Farming Group of the Field Crops AoE Team will be sponsoring the following program. Please talk this up with people in your area and encourage them to attend.

Tuesday, March 11, 1999; 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
International Center, Spartan Room B/C
Learn from experienced speakers about technologies and strategies for assessing soil variability for application in a precision farming system in Michigan.

What Should You Know About Soils and Plant Productivity? - Dr. Richard Harwood, MSU
Presents an overview of soils and fertility and how they relate to plant productivity, including soils as a landscape feature, important soil characteristics that govern plant development, and essential nutritional elements for plant growth.

Grid Sampling S What Have We Learned? - Joe Nester, Nester Ag Management, OH
Reviews current practices in grid sampling, lessons learned from farmer experience and research on grid size and how that relates to variations in fertility for Michigan soils.

Current and Future Sensing Technology for Mapping Soils S Ken Sudduth, USDA-Missouri
Reviews technologies that are currently available for sensing soil properties, including a discussion of how they work and the relation-ship of the data with important soil properties.

Is The Internet a Goldmine for Soils Information? - Elaine Brown, MSU
Reviews currently available web sites that provide information resources about soils, including digitized soil maps, drainage and other topographical resources and interactions between soils and agricultural chemicals.

Remote Sensing of Bare SoilS An Eye in the Sky - EMERGE, Grower Service Corp.
Images from satellites and aerial photographs may allow precision farmers to view soil differences across a field. The basics of remote sensing technologies, how soils interact with light energy and examples of remote sensing of bare soils for use in precision farming.

How Do I Use This Soils Data for Precision Farming? - Dave Franzen, N.D. State University
The concept of management zones incorporates the knowledge gained from soil surveys, topography and landscape position, aerial photographs, yield maps and field history to defines areas of the field that are similar in productivity and can be managed as a unit. Non-grid soil sampling.

Roger Brook

Small Wind Energy Systems for the Homeowner
http://www.dulley.com/e012.htm
Publication explains the benefits of wind power, helps you assess your wind resource and possible sites, discusses legal and environmental obstacles and analyzes economic considerations.

Guided Tour on Wind Energy
http://www.windpower.dk/tour/
Nine independent study units on wind energy. After the introduction, start with the section on Wind Energy Resources, it makes it much easier to understand the other sections.

National Wind Technology Center
http://www.nrel.gov/wind/
The National Wind Technology Center is designed not only to be a center for research, but a technology magnet for a new industry

Wind Energy Links
http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/sme/ppa/wind/linkmenu.html
This list of links includes everything of general interest (updated September 1997). The list of sources should provide a good introduction to the current application of wind energy.

American Wind Energy Association
ttp://www.igc.org/awea/
Since 1974 the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has advocated the development of wind energy as an energy alternative in the U.S. and around the world.

Wind Energy Program, U.S. Dept. Energy
http://www.igc.org/awea/
Information on wind turbine applications (small-scale and utility scale); a collection of wind turbine pictures, wind resource maps, data, documentation and links to other wind sites.

Wind Energy Profile
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/renewable.energy.annual/chap05.html
A review (April 1997) of wind energy in the U.S., including a discussion of the role of government, technology and ownership issues. A chapter in the report Renewable Energy Annual 1996 by the Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy.

Wind Energy Technology
http://www.sandia.gov/Renewable_Energy/wind_energy/homepage.html
The Wind Energy Technology effort at Sandia National Lab seeks to develop knowledge and tools to address critical technology issues affecting the commercialization of wind energy.

Wind Energy Comes of Age  
http://rotor.fb12.tu-berlin.de/gwindenergy.html
"Wind Energy Comes of Age" by Paul Gipe chronicles wind energy's progress to its maturation on the plains of northern Europe in the 1990s. Contends that wind energy has come of age as a commercial technology for generating electricity.

Landowner's Guide to Wind Energy In the Upper Midwest
http://www.me3.org/issues/wind/iwlaguid.html
How landowners can evaluate their wind resources, how they can evaluate the economics of wind power under a variety of development scenarios and the contractual issues a landowner should consider when approached by a wind developer.

Roger Brook — Neither I nor Michigan State University endorse these sites or the
information content.