Geocaching Australia

Sounds like an "Eco Event". Similar principle to a CITO.

Otherwise you could make an "eco cache" with an ALR of the photo of the tree that you planted?

Another idea is that the group has the "codeword" which they can control and therefore validate your find. Though setting the weird world of geocachers onto a land care group sounds sort of interesting.

I don't want events if I can avoid it. I'd like a cache you can do anytime, but within the requirement of the land care group. It's about the carbon credit so any planting works, but I don't want a locationless. Ecocaches are workable I suspect but not quite sure how.

While I like the idea behind it, as in the offsetting your pollution, I think that it is a little bit far fetched to combine it with a geocaching background just like I find a CITO event far fetched.

I consider a possible donation in the shop to One Tree Planted (http://onetreeplanted.org/) a better way, that makes it trackable within the Geocaching Australia system on who did it and as such are you able to measure the success for the cause objectively.

Edwin

Does that mob do anything in Australia? I can't see that they do. Not to criticise the idea, but I would much prefer to be directly involved with something than "give someone else a few bucks and let them do the hard work". That seems like a bit of a cop out.

By the way, I suspect that even if we planted a billion trees, we're not going to offset our own geocaching carbon footprint.

Various numbers indicate (depending on the age of your car and the type of car it is) you might be outputting 150g of CO2 per km. A 200km round trip for me (Melbourne, Ballarat), plus 50km in the area means on a full day of geocaching I would need to offset 250km of driving or around 37.5kg of CO2.

The amount of CO2 that can be absorbed by trees varies signifivcantl;y by species, area, density, age, etc. There is no number that I can spot that gives a good indication of how much (say) a eucalyptus would absorb over its life span from a sapling to a full tree that lives 100 years. For the sake of discussion I have found that a hard wood tree with a diameter of 1m will sequester (net) around 300kg of carbon in its life.

I would need to plant (very rough averaging here) 1 tree for every 9-10 days of full on geocaching.

So if I did 12 full days a year (37.5kg) , plus 30 medium days (25kg) and 10 small days (10Kg) (this equates to 1 caching day a week by the way() I would need to offset 12 * 37.5 plus 30 * 25 plus 10 * 10 = 1,300 kg or 1.3 tonnes per year.

Again, very roughly I would need to plant, and nurture, 4-5 pretty large hardwood trees per year and hope they live for 80-100 years.

This seems somewhat achievable until someone comes in and shoots my numbers down (please do so).

So if I have an eco-cache somewhere near me that I was allowed to plant a tree in, I could head out for a few hours, once a year and plant enough trees to cover off my geocaching adventures CO2 emissions.

I would rather do that than give 4-5 bucks to a company to make me feel better.

Now whether an eco-cache isa cache or not is a big question. A cache is a container hidden at co-ordinates. What I am doing is locating some co-ordinates and planting a tree. Not exactly a geocache in the usual sense of the word, but it's a cache in that I am sequestering CO2 like a cache (a collection of items of the same type stored in a hidden or inaccessible place).

So an eco-cache is a cache just not a geocache per se.

I am still very interested in this as a discussion and how we might be able to work with environmental groups to identify land that can be planted at times other than "national tree planting day" or whatever. Worst case, though, is that we would need to work with a local land care style group, when they have a tree planting day I could arrange an 'eco-cache event', attend, plant a tree, gather the co-ordinates and log it.

Less of a locationless cache and more of an eco-event-cache-thing.

I would love it if there was a way for me to turn my photos in cache logs around the right direction

That's been requested and answered I believe. The version of software we have doesn't support it. But I'll add it to the list anyway so we know for the future.

caughtatwork wrote:.... But I'll add it to the list anyway so we know for the future.

Is this 'list' on the wiki somewhere?

Yes. It's referred to as the development list.
http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Geoc ... pment_List

Wherever possible we try to add the data there so it's centralised and we can refer back to the forum for details when your developers have time to do work. At the moment the list is growing because ... life.

http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Geoc ... pment_List

This is where we put ideas as they occur (and where some ideas go to die)

I love the idea of a history cache. I think it could encourage more people to become active members of the Geocaching Australia site, both as hiders and finders. It could become a very popular cache type and one that I can't wait to see started.

An Environmental cache type would also be good - perhaps an expansion of an earthcache? Go to location, learn something new and have the chance to give back thru a photo or other info. Many cachers are involved with these environmental groups and are aware of the contribution they could make assisting with monitoring, etc. Many cachers are also scared of GC earthcaches and the tricky questions they sometimes pose. I am looking forward to seeing how this develops.

I also reckon that you ask for the photo - who has a phone that can't take a photo these days? Going caching? The first thing I pick up is my gps, then at least a pen and my phone.

It would be great to have an option to select "Is on my Planned List" when creating a query. Alternatively, on the Planned List page, have the options to output to GPX, ZIP and to view in GMAP, Google Earth.

Explain more about the planned list please.

If you're making a query and the criteria fits a planned cache it's automatically on the list.
If you're making a query and the criteria does NOT fit a planned cache it will not be on the list.
How does having the planned list option help?

OR

Are you saying the planned list becomes additional criteria and despite the fact that there may be 1000 caches that match I only want those on my planned list?

A little more explanation will help me to see what you're thinking about.

caughtatwork wrote:Explain more about the planned list please.

If you're making a query and the criteria fits a planned cache it's automatically on the list.
If you're making a query and the criteria does NOT fit a planned cache it will not be on the list.
How does having the planned list option help?

OR

Are you saying the planned list becomes additional criteria and despite the fact that there may be 1000 caches that match I only want those on my planned list?

A little more explanation will help me to see what you're thinking about.

I want to be able to restrict my query to only those that are on my planned list.

I have a Planned Query which utilises the ability to tag caches. No prizes for guessing what word I use. I couldn't find any other way of doing it but will stand corrected.

Tuena wrote:I have a Planned Query which utilises the ability to tag caches. No prizes for guessing what word I use. I couldn't find any other way of doing it but will stand corrected.

Yep, I've done that as well, but looking for a way to do it utilising the hotlist - it is much quicker to add/remove caches from the Planned List than it is to add/remove tags from caches.