I'm offering to help anyone needing illustrations. Rob Painting has recently asked for some carbon cycle illustrations shown here (Rob, let me know if you have changes):

Over the next couple weeks, I'll be focussing on a project, but after that, I should be available for regular projects.

jg

The fast carbon cycle looks like the circulation of air, like diagrams showing hot air rising and cold air falling.
I think the gap between the arrows needs to be emphasised, or maybe the arrows need to be more elaborate.

I would put the color of the arrows to a different color to make them stand out; perhaps brown or red.

Yellow, actually, would go well with the existing palette.

It's a work in progress. Thanks JG - I'll have a tinker with what you've done so far.

If those are suppose to be fish in the water...  do you think you could add little X's in their eyes in the second panel?  (joke)

Why is the first graphic labeld "Fast"?

Badger, because the carbon can rapidly exchange between the atmosphere, forest, soils and oceans. Total atmospheric CO2 fluctuates up and down during each year because of the rapid exchange.

The slow, or geological carbon cycle is the weathering of rocks  - which takes CO2 out of the atmosphere on long (millenial) timescales, and therefore prevents CO2 from volcanic activity from building up, and causing global warming.

And no, I didn't coin the term 'fast carbon cycle'.

JG/JC/Anybody - is it possible to embed an image within a graphic, so that when you run your cursor over the embedded image you can click on a larger version?

I was thinking of creating a "Pre-industrial Fast Carbon Cycle" and a "Post-industrial Fast Carbon Cycle" with atmospheric CO2 levels for each period, embedded within a rectangle in one corner. Is this doable?

Rob, you create two versions of the image, one without the embedded image, one with. You can then create a rollover using some basic javascript code to switch between the two. Alternatively it can be done using Flash.

http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/tips/html/javascript_image_rollovers.php3

Cool, thanks Paul.

Rob if you post the two images here, I'll copy them and I can make a Flash swf file that can be embedded in a page without faffing about with Javascript.

Thanks Paul for the backup on this question. I too can put them into Flash, but I'm cluesless as to how to get Flash working on blogs. And there's also the nuisance that Flash won't display on Apple mobile devices.

Rob, if you haven't made significant changes to the graphics, I can email Paul the source files I have or I can break out the pieces for him or you to use.

jg

JG - still working on some revisions. Thks. Ideally the carbon cycle should be blatantly obvious to the casual reader. Not there yet.