1. Dung or manure refers to the undigested faecal matter that has passed through an animal's gut,
usually of the bovine animal species (cattle/cows, yak, water buffalo, bison). Gas from cow dung
is considered the most important form of bioenergy in rural Indian villages (where it is known as
gobar gas) and many other parts of the developing world. Cow dung is used as a fertilizer and
fuel for cooking and as a biogas (rich in methane) to produce electricity and hSeed can be
dispersed in various manners; this is normally dependant on the physical characteristics of the
seed or seed coat or the fruit containing the seed.
Seed dispersal is necessary to move plants to new locations, this reduces overpopulation and
Seed can be dispersed in various manners; this is normally dependant on the physical characteristics of
the seed or seed coat or the fruit containing the seed.
Seed dispersal is necessary to move plants to new locations, this reduces overpopulation and
competition for resources in the same location, dispersal also extends the physical range of the plants
into new ecological regions. Indirectly it improves the chances of the new plants being able to
interbreed or improve the gene pool of the particular plant, plants grown in very isolated or specific
closed regions have very little genetic diversity and are cannot cope with sudden threats to their
existence.
The agents or mechanisms of dispersal are also known as vectors of dispersal.
Animals: Seed contained in edible fruit (e.g. figs, tomato, mango, berries) can be distributed by animals
which eat the fruit and then eventually excrete them in another location. Examples: Bats, monkeys,
squirrels, cattle, wild herbivores.
Insects: Many insects collect seed for food (ants, termites etc.), the seed is then taken back to the nest
where it may germinate or be dropped and germinate.
Wind: Certain seed is adapted to dispersal by wind; these normally have a wing or similar appendage
that allows the seed to be carried by air currents. Examples, pine seeds (wing), Acer seed (wing), Maple
and Dandelion.
Gravity: Certain seeds are heavy and rounded in shape, this facilitates the seed falling from the seed pod
and rolling a distance from the parent plant.
Burrs and hooks: Certain seeds have burrs, hooks or thorns, the aim of these is to attach themselves to
the skin or fur of a passing or foraging animals (or clothes in the case of humans); the animal then moves
to another location where hopefully the seed drops and germinates. Examples include: Burdock and
Foxtail.
Mechanical/ Explosive dispersal: Some plants have "exploding" pods that physically throw the seed
away from the parent plant. Examples of these include: Impatiens/ Balsam and some legumes.
Water: Some seeds, particularly of plants that grow close to the coast or rivers are adapted to float in
order to be distributed away from the parent. Most water plants employ this method of dispersal.
Examples are Coconuts, mangrove plants and Lotus.
Fire: While fire per se is not a method of dispersal it is a key factor in releasing seed (or breaking seed
dormancy) of some species that otherwise would not be able to be released or ge rminate. Examples

2. include Protea, Erica, certain Pines and some Banksia species. competition for resources in the same
location, dispersal also extends the physical range of the plants into new ecological regions.
Indirectly it improves the chances of the new plants being able to interbreed or improve the gene
pool of the particular plant, plants grown in very isolated or specific closed regions have very
little genetic diversity and are cannot cope with sudden threats to their existence.
The agents or mechanisms of dispersal are also known as vectors of dispersal.
Animals: Seed contained in edible fruit (e.g. figs, tomato, mango, berries) can be distributed by
animals which eat the fruit and then eventually excrete them in another location. Examples: Bats,
monkeys, squirrels, cattle, wild herbivores.
Insects: Many insects collect seed for food (ants, termites etc.), the seed is then taken back to the
nest where it may germinate or be dropped and germinate.
Wind: Certain seed is adapted to dispersal by wind; these normally have a wing or similar
appendage that allows the seed to be carried by air currents. Examples, pine seeds (wing), Acer
seed (wing), Maple and Dandelion.
Gravity: Certain seeds are heavy and rounded in shape, this facilitates the seed falling from the
seed pod and rolling a distance from the parent plant.
Burrs and hooks: Certain seeds have burrs, hooks or thorns, the aim of these is to attach
themselves to the skin or fur of a passing or foraging animals (or clothes in the case of humans);
the animal then moves to another location where hopefully the seed drops and germinates.
Examples include: Burdock and Foxtail.
Mechanical/ Explosive dispersal: Some plants have "exploding" pods that physically throw the
seed away from the parent plant. Examples of these include: Impatiens/ Balsam and some
legumes.
Water: Some seeds, particularly of plants that grow close to the coast or rivers are adapted to
float in order to be distributed away from the parent. Most water plants employ this method of
dispersal. Examples are Coconuts, mangrove plants and Lotus.
Fire: While fire per se is not a method of dispersal it is a key factor in releasing seed (or breaking
seed dormancy) of some species that otherwise would not be able to be released or germinate.
Examples include Protea, Erica, certain Pines and some Banksia species. eat.

3. Cow dung being dried for cooking fuel in India.
Events
 18-20 October 2010, Des Moines, Iowa, USA: 10th Annual BioCycle Renewable
Energy from Organics Recycling. (Themes: biogas, crop residue, manure, waste)
News
2011
Burning issues: tackling indoor air pollution, 7 May 2011 by The Lancet: "According to
WHO, 2 million people die as a result of the smoke generated by open fires or crude stoves
within their homes every year. Indoor air pollution has been definitively linked to lung cancer,
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and pneumonia, the risk of which is A pack animal or
beast of burden is a working animal used by humans as means of transporting materials by
attaching them so their weight bears on the animal's back; the term may be applied to either an
individual animal or a species so employed. The term pack animal is sometimes used in contrast
to draft animal, which is a working animal that typically pulls a load behind itself (such as a
plow or a wheeled cart) rather than carrying cargo directly on its back.
Many ungulate species are traditional pack animals, including elephants, camels, the yak,
reindeer, goats, water buffalo and llama, and many of the domesticated Equidae (horse family).

4. A camel pack animal transporting nomadic materials in Eyl, Somalia.
The term is not routinely applied to humans carrying loads on their backs except to make a
pejorative point about the injustice of so employing them, or about the privation that usually
occasions accepting such work without explicit coercion. (The 1978 Rolling Stones song "Beast
of Burden" refers to a sense of abuse, accepted within a romantic relationship.) Nevertheless,
from a physical point of view, certainly many considerations apply equally to human and other
pack animals, without considering the range of social conditions ranging through slaves, abused
women and children, Himalayan and African natives employed as expedition porters,
vacationing students whose duties as staff of mountaineering huts include packing heavy loads of
supplies up steep slopes, and purely recreational hikers and backpackers including both short-trip
ones, and long-trip backpackers who court injury and emaciation in carrying their heavy loads.
Another unconventional form of pack animal may be the dogs that are brought along on hikes
carrying their own supply of drinking water and snacks on their backs, whether to provide them
more exercise, or in pursuit of a hiker's ethic of "everyone carries his own gear".
 doubled by exposure to indoor smoke. More than 900 000 people die from pneumonia
caused by indoor air pollution every year. 500 million households worldwide—roughly 3
billion people—rely on solid fuels, such as wood, animal dung, or coal, for cooking and
heating. These fuels are usually burned in a rudimentary stove, or in a traditional open
fire. It need not be a problem, at least in terms of health. But only assuming the fuel is
completely combusted—wood must be dry, and the stove must work efficiently—and
there is plenty of ventilation, a spacious chimney, or a sizeable window. In those places
where the use of solid fuels prevails, however, these conditions rarely apply, and the
consequences can be severe."
o "Yet, 'despite the magnitude of this growing problem' notes WHO 'the health
impacts of exposure to indoor air pollution have yet to become a central focus of
research, development aid, and policy making'....But the past year has had some
encouraging advances."
o "In September, 2010, the UN Foundation launched the Global Alliance for Clean
Cook Stoves....The Alliance—a public-private initiative—brings together partners
from the range of specialties across which the issue of indoor air pollution
sprawls. There is public health, of course, but also energy, international
development, female empowerment, climate change, technology, and business."

5. o "The real benefits will be seen by switching to cleaner fuels and cleaner stoves.
Improved stoves—those fitted with fans, for example—combust fuel more
efficiently, have lower emissions, and require shorter cooking times."[1]
2010
 NRDC Assesses Biochar - Says High Hopes For Carbon Storage Premature , 29
November 2010 by Treehugger: "There's been lots of back and forth in the past year on
biochar, ranging from research showing it has huge potential for absorbing carbon
emissions on one side, to uncertainty about its potential, to outright hostility towards the
enthusiasm shown towards it--and all from people with good environmental credentials.
A new report from NRDC tries to sort it all out, and comes down somewhere in the
middle."
o "Biochar: Assessing the Promise and Risks To Guide U.S. Policy (PDF file)
arrives at the overall conclusion that there is great technical potential for biochar
on a global scale....It's just premature to claim with certainty what the impact of
widespread biochar production and application will be..."
o "The main point made about developing biochar systems with the best
environmental performance is using the right feedstock." The report claims that
already existing 'concentrated sources of waste biomass, such as animal manures,
organic municipal solid waste, and urban wood residues', as opposed to plants
grown explicitly for use as biochar feedstocks, would be the best material for
biochar production, as such existing feedstocks are not linked to land-use
changes.
o "As for the optimum method of producing the biochar itself, the report says slow
pyrolysis is best for maximizing output and creating the best, most uniform
product."[2]
o Download the report: Biochar: Assessing the Promise and Risks To Guide U.S.
Policy (PDF file)
 US $50 Million Pledge For Cleaner Cookstoves is Big Win For Women, Forests &
Climate, 21 September 2010 by TreeHugger: "Today Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
is expected to announce a $50 million pledge of seed money, distributed over five years,
to help the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves provide 100 million clean-burning
biomass cookstoves by 2020 to people in Africa, Asia and South America."
o "[T]he UN says every year 1.9 million people, mostly women and children, die
from ailments caused by exposure to smoke from inefficient biomass cooking
stoves."
o "What fuels these cookstoves? In some places it's dried animal dung--eminently
renewable and frankly a good use of natural resources, but still a health hazard
indoors--but it's also wood. Gathered and cut from forests, often carried long
distances, again most often by women, this contributes to rampant deforestation in
some places and is a burden that can be lessened by stoves which use fuel more
efficiently."
o "Beyond the effect of cookstove smoke on people in the immediate vicinity, the
black carbon soot has a climate impact as well."[3]

6.  Scientists Question EPA's Greenhouse Gas Emission Estimates , 28 June 2010 by
azocleantech.com: "The approach the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses
to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural anaerobic lagoons that treat
manure contains errors and may underestimate methane emissions by up to 65%,
according to scientists".
o "An interdisciplinary team of scientists from the University of Missouri evaluated
the EPA and IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] approach to
estimate greenhouse emissions from anaerobic lagoons." They "documented
errors in the approach, which the EPA and IPCC adapted from a method used to
estimate methane production from anaerobic digesters." Additionally, the team
"found that uncovered anaerobic lagoons were more efficient at converting waste
to methane than predicted using literature based on digesters."[4]
o See the paper, An Evaluation of the USEPA Calculations of Greenhouse Gas
Emissions from Anaerobic Lagoons.
 China Farm Gets Shocking Amount of Power From Cow Poop, 6 May 2010 by The
New York Times: "A 250,000-head dairy operation in northeast China plans to open the
world's largest cow manure-fed power project in September, according to General
Electric Co., the company supplying four biogas turbines to the Liaoning Huishan Cow
Farm in Shenyang. For comparison, the largest U.S. dairy farms have 15,000 cattle."
o "China's newest livestock digester will reduce piles of dung, yield fertilizer and
heat, and will supply 38,000 megawatt-hours of power annually to the state's
power grid, enough to meet the average demand of some 15,000 Chinese
residents. It produces biogas, a methane and carbon dioxide mix emanating from
manure, grease, sewage or other organic materials allowed to stew in an oxygen-free
chamber."
o "The barriers to the expansion of biogas are about economics, not technology, and
how long it takes for biogas projects to pay off varies country by country."
o "The biogas field could be one more example of the ways the United States is
falling behind China. Yesterday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that the
United States is lagging behind China, which provides strong tax incentives for a
host of renewable energy technologies."[5]
 EPA Administrator and Agriculture Secretary Team Up to Promote Farm Energy
Generation, 3 May 2010 press release by USDA: "U.S. Department of Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P.
Jackson today announced a new interagency agreement promoting renewable energy
generation and slashing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock operations. The
agreement expands the work of the AgSTAR program, a joint EPA-USDA effort that
helps livestock producers reduce methane emissions from their operations."
o "The collaboration will expand technical assistance efforts, improve technical
standards and guidance for the construction and evaluation of biogas recovery
systems, and expand outreach to livestock producers and assist them with pre-feasibility
studies."
o "Biogas is composed primarily of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more
potent than carbon dioxide. Biogas emitted from manure management systems

7. called digesters can be collected and used to produce electricity, heat or hot
water."[6]
 Haiti's Rebuild May Be Biochar's Big Breakthough, 4 March 2010 by TreeHugger:
"Biochar, the 'co product' of burning wood or agricultural waste in a pyrolitic (oxygen
free) environment, has garnered both praise and criticism for its possibilities as a CO2
sequestration tool."
o "WorldStoves, a company that makes a number of pyrolitic stoves, has partnered
with the NGO International Lifeline Fund and a private Haitian company to bring
its 'Lucia' stove designs to Haiti. In Haiti, the use of wood for charcoal for home
cooking needs is widespread, which has led to a continuing cycle of deforestation
and soil degradation."
o "What makes the Lucia stove so magic is that a Haitian woman or man could
cook for a five-person family using just about 300 grams of twigs, groundnut
shells, rice husk or dung."
o "[If] biochar is included in the UN's Certified Emission Reductions (CER) and
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) schemes, creating it in cookstoves and
sequestering it in soil could help Haiti economically as well."[7]
2009
 USDA Makes a Move on Methane, 12 December 2009 by CQ Politics: "Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a conference call from Copenhagen that his department
and the dairy industry have reached an agreement to accelerate efforts to reduce the
industry’s greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020. The announcement is part of the
Obama administration’s continuing campaign to convince farmers they can benefit from
an international agreement on climate change."
o "USDA will provide technical assistance and grants to dairy farmers for anaerobic
digesters and generators used to compost manure, extract gases and burn them to
produce electricity. Manure emits methane, a major greenhouse gas."[8]
 Deadly ‘brown cloud’ over South Asia caused by wood and dung burning, 23
January 2009 by Mongabay.com: "Long a subject of debate, the cause of the infamo us
brown cloud that hovers over the Indian Ocean and South Asia every winter has finally
been discovered. Researchers led by Dr Orjan Gustafsson from the University of
Stockholm in Sweden announced in Science that 70 percent of the cloud is made up of
soot from the burning of biomasses, largely wood and animal dung used for cooking."
o "Researchers hope the discovery of the cloud’s source will push policy makers to
rapidly aid the region’s poor in switching to cleaner methods of cooking, such as
solar."
o "As well as being linked to global warming, the brown cloud is believed to
lengthen droughts, exacerbate monsoons, and further melt the Himalayan glaciers,
which currently provide fresh water to billions of people. Already, over three
hundred thousand people die in Asia due to illnesses linked to brown cloud
pollutants annually."[9]

8. A beast of burden is a domesticated animal which has been trained to carry people or goods.
Beasts of burden tend to be on the large scale of domesticated animals, so that they can carry
heavy loads, with the exception to this rule being the dog, an animal which has been widely used
as a beast of burden in the arctic regions of the world. The use of domesticated animals to carry
goods and people is ancient, with some researchers suggesting that it may actually pre-date
agriculture, since dogs were domesticated by hunting and gathering societies.
Different animals are used around the world as beasts of burden. Some common examples are:
elephants, donkeys, horses, yaks, oxen, mules, yaks, buffaloes, camels, llamas, reindeer, and
water buffalo. Most modern beasts of burden are bred on farms, and some are the result of
centuries of breeding for strength and temperament, although some, like Asian elephants, are
trapped in the wild and trained. In some cases, years of breeding has resulted in a very refined
animal which differs radically from its wild counterparts.
A beast of burden is a domesticated animal which has been trained to carry people or goods.
Beasts of burden tend to be on the large scale of domesticated animals, so that they can carry
heavy loads, with the exception to this rule being the dog, an animal which has been widely used
as a beast of burden in the arctic regions of the world. The use of domesticated animals to carry
goods and people is ancient, with some researchers suggesting that it may actually pre-date
agriculture, since dogs were domesticated by hunting and gathering societies.
Different animals are used around the world as beasts of burden. Some common examples are:
elephants, donkeys, horses, yaks, oxen, mules, yaks, buffaloes, camels, llamas, reindeer, and
water buffalo. Most modern beasts of burden are bred on farms, and some are the result of
centuries of breeding for strength and temperament, although some, like Asian elephants, are
trapped in the wild and trained. In some cases, years of breeding has resulted in a very refined
animal which differs radically from its wild counterparts.