Biodiversity and Peaks

• Conservation Resource Briefs 2008.
  
  Brought to you by the Natural Resources Conservation Service branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There a several reports ranging from Soil Quality, Soil Erosion, Water Management, and Wetlands.

• Peak Soil: Why Cellulosic Ethanol, Biofuels are Unsustainable and a Threat to America April 10, 2007.
  
  Written by Alice Friedemann and hosted at Culture Change. This 20 page article takes a critical look into large scale biofuel production and it's downfalls, particularly in biodiversity, soil, water, to possible solutions and reformations.

• Water Implications of Biofuels Production in the U.S. October, 2007.
  
  Prepared by the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council.

• The True Cost of Agrofuels: Impacts on Food, Forests, People and Climate 2007.
  
  This report is one of the most complete analysis of the multiple aspects of Agrofuels covering issues of soil, corporate control and consolidation, water, plantations and pulp mills, fertilizer usage, Genetic Engineering, transportation, and climate change. The conclusion fleshes out pathways and solutions to meeting the challenges for which agrofuels are a false solution.

• Agrofuels: Towards a Reality Check in 9 Key Areas June, 2007.
  
  Report brought to you by the Transnational Institute, which includes several European groups. The Report asks 9 key questions and explores them with 30 pages of quality material with many references and an international scope.

• National Geographic Photo Flashback September, 2008.
  
  This picture of a man measuring the former ground level in rural New Mexico, in 1957, greatly illustrates some of the follies being revisted with current Biofuel, Biochar, and Industrial Agriculture practices. "Only the deep roots of native bluestem grass held this hill of sandy soil together; winds had carved the rest away. Back then farmers here used clean tillage, the practice of clearing the soil surface of plant debris."