Recently a columnist in a local Southeastern Connecticut newspaper wrote about the things that bug him when driving. It included the usual gripes that we all have—people driving slowly in the passing lane, failure to use turn signals, merging on the highway with little consideration of the traffic already on the highway, able-bodied people parking […]
Where in Connecticut?
Connecticut (and the rest of the world for that matter) looks so different from above than from the ground. I spend a good deal of time looking at aerial imagery of Connecticut including different color combinations, times of year (leaves or no leaves) and different years to see change. There are many places that I […]
Gull Island Habitat Management Project
November 7, 2013 Presented by Juliana Barrett, CT Sea Grant & Joel Stocker, UConn CLEAR Great Gull Island, owned by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), has two species of terns nesting on the island: the Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) with 9,500 pairs and the Roseate Tern (S. dougallii) with 1,300 pairs. This represents […]
Connecticut Shoreline Resiliency Fund
Last week, on the one year anniversary of SuperStorm Sandy, Governor Malloy announced the creation of the Connecticut Shoreline Resiliency Fund. This fund is for state residents whose homes or businesses are subject to flooding allowing them to obtain low interest loans to elevate homes and flood proof businesses. With no income limits defining eligibility, […]
Green Roofs Blossom in America’s Cities
City parks and stock exchanges are not the only place to find large expanses of green these days. Green roofs are starting to become part of the cityscape in many of the larger cities on both the East and West coasts. The reason? Green roofs provide a host of environmental benefits: they increase energy efficiency, […]
What are the chances Halloween will be ruined again?
“Dad, is Halloween going to be cancelled again this year because of the weather?” It’s not a pleasant thought for kids dreaming of bags full of candy. Well, we are approaching the end of October, and for those of us who have been in Connecticut for the past few years, it seems appropriate to discuss […]
CLEARscapes – Fall 2013 Edition
In This Issue Teens Master Mapping at UConn’s Natural Resources Conservation Academy Smartphones & GPS On the Track of Nitrogen Program and Project updates on a new riparian tool a new GTP class rain garden app update recently won awards (View Newsletter as pdf)
Teens Master the Art (and fun!) of Mapping at UConn’s NRC Academy
The Natural Resource Conservation Academy (NRCA) is an innovative program in conservation and land use planning for a select group of Connecticut high school students. The Academy starts with a week-long field course at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Throughout the week, students interact with UConn faculty and learn about mapping and geospatial information, […]
Rain Got You in a Depression? Put it in One!
With historic amounts of rain falling on our state this month, it is easy to get a little down. It puts a damper on beach days, picnics, and hikes. Not to make things worse, but did you also know that as all that rain runs off roofs, parking lots, driveways, and roads and into storm […]
"The Cicadas are Coming! The Cicadas are Coming!"
Word on the street is that Brood II is on the move and heading toward Connecticut. I’m talking Cicadas. You know, those big, swarming monsters bugs with three red eyes, four wings, six legs, a wing span of one to six inches and years of energy stored up after percolating in the ground for almost […]
What We Don’t Know We Don’t Know About Climate Change
With a Shout out to Donald Rumsfeld “There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know. ” […]
Goodbye GPS Unit, Hello Smart Phone
Smartphones are the swiss army knife of the digital world. They have replaced countless single-function gadgets from calculators to cameras to pagers to, um, phones! But for mapping geeks, one of the gadgets they have not quite been able to shake is the handheld GPS unit, at least until now. The Geospatial Training Program at […]
CLEAR Faculty/Staff Honored at 2013 Awards & Honors Event
Three CLEAR faculty/staff were recently honored by UConn’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. For the second year in a row CLEAR team members (a team of two this year) have won the CES Grant for Innovative Programming in Extension Award. David Dickson and Michael Dietz won for their creation of the Rain Garden App, the […]
Historical Shoreline Change Project Featured on Local News
Recent storms have focused interest on the dynamics of the shoreline. Receiving attention is the question, “What has it done in the past?” In 2010 the USGS released their report on historical shoreline change along the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts from Virginia to Maine. Connecticut, buried in the Sound, was passed by. With funding […]
A Watershed Moment
Many of us have heard about watershed protection efforts. Perhaps you live in a drinking water supply watershed. Poor Willy Wonka was wrongly accused of poisoning the watershed of his brown river (it turned out to be chocolate). But what is a watershed, really? In physical terms, a watershed is an area of land that […]
When it comes to Climate Change— Money Talks
It is generally accepted by climate scientists that New England will experience a trend of increasing intensity and frequency of storms resulting in an increase in flooding and coastal erosion. Recent storms have raised our collective awareness of the damage, both fiscal and physical, that these storms can cause. Consider that Sandy wasn’t even a […]
Dealing in Imagery
My extra desk has seen a steady stream of boxes – little and big ones, brown and black ones, even an iPad box (no iPad included). One had old maps crumpled up to protect its contents. Some have been dropped off and others have been part of a suspicious looking package trade at meetings across […]
Crackerjack Cartography: Mapping Our National Pastime
The first of April means the start of something magical to many, and I’m not just talking wood frogs and practical jokes. It’s Opening Day, the start of baseball season in America. A day when our nation’s pastime and my personal pastime collide. I love baseball and I love maps. This time of year, I […]
Of Witch Hazel and Wood Frogs
Here at CLEAR I don’t think anyone would claim to be a naturalist, at least of any skill or repute. But that doesn’t prevent our collective and individual enjoyment of the natural world, including the signal events that mark the turning of the seasons. For me (forgive me, crocus fans), there are really three signature […]
Drones for the Common Good
When people hear the word drone most look to the sky with fear and trepidation. Are they the next target for a missile strike? Are the police watching them? Is what they do in their back yard going to show up on the web? Rand Paul spoke for half a day about the evils of drones and the […]